Turnaround
by songofwinterfell
Summary: Loki dies, but it is never as simple as that.
1. the end

**Turnaround**

**1. the end**

Loki explains his plan. Thor does not like it.

"Loki, that plan of yours is entirely too dangerous", he says with a frown, his fingers twitching absently around Mjölnir's handle. It is a habit he has never seemed to notice himself, but Loki has seen him do it for years, particularly when he is feeling nervous or agitated.

Loki fights the urge to sigh in exasperation. "It is the only way we will be able to get near the Aether. It will be exposed and vulnerable when Malekith takes it from your mortal, and that is our chance to destroy it. It is as simple as that."

He has told the plan a few times already, explained every detail of it, but every time Thor finds something new to complain about, and they have made no progress. Loki thinks he should magic Thor's lips shut so that he could not say a word anymore. It certainly would not be the first time for that.

"And when the Aether is lured out, you strike it with Mjölnir", Loki continues, speaking slowly as if he were talking to a child, trying to get it through that oaf's thick skull. "That shouldn't be too hard for you."

There was a time when Thor was all too happy to go along with whatever plans Loki schemed without questioning him at all, blindly trusting his clever little brother to ensure the success of their quests. He and his friends never bothered to plan anything when they had him, they left all the boring work for him and Loki has lost count of all those times he saved their lives from their idiotic actions.

But those days are long gone now, have been gone for years. There is only doubt and wariness now in Thor's eyes as he listens to the man who he used to love with a deep frown on his face, not daring to even think about trusting him. Thor, who was once so naïve, has now learned that trust is a fragile thing, one that is easily broken.

"But what if Malekith doesn't believe you?" Thor asks. "He might realise that we are setting a trap for him, and what will we do then? We don't have another plan."

Loki scoffs. "You don't trust my abilities to lie? Why, Thor, I thought you have had enough experience of that."

"It is not your abilities that I don't trust", Thor says then, his voice taut as a string and his teeth gritted. "But I cannot risk the fate of the realms for a plan has no certainty of succeeding."

"It is better than nothing", Loki answers, "and Malekith will not realise that he is being tricked."

"How can you be so sure?" Thor demands. "Malekith is not a fool, he must know that Asgard will not stand idle when he seeks to bring darkness to the realms."

"Exactly. He expects an army of Einherjar, not a lone prince, a prisoner and a mortal. And even if he suspects something, he is greedy and we pose no threat to him for his power exceeds ours", Loki says. Then he smirks, and it is not a pretty sight. "Or so he thinks."

"And when the Aether is destroyed?"

Loki looks at Thor in the eye, bright green meeting blue. "Kill them all."

_They killed Mother, they made her bleed, kill them all, make them scream_.

Thor looks still doubtful, and he opens his mouth to say something, probably to complain again, but Loki's patience is quickly thinning and he speaks before Thor can even utter a word.

"If you have a better plan, please enlighten me then. I will hear it gladly", he snaps.

He knows that the plan is not sound, not even remotely, but it is all they have right now because he did not have enough time to think of anything better. The plan is risky, that is true, and there is a chance that it might not work at all, but they do not have any other options. If they go unprepared, they will die without a doubt.

Thor says nothing, only grits his teeth and looks away, and there is the answer Loki was looking for.

"I didn't think so", Loki says with a nasty smirk. Of course Thor would not bother planning anything beforehand when he has his hammer and brawn. He would rather just hit his way out of everything.

"Loki", Thor almost growls then, his grip on Mjölnir tightening, and it responds with a hum. He takes a step towards Loki who stays where he is, hands crossed across his chest and chin lifted up, meeting Thor's eyes. Thor is a fool if he thinks that Loki cares about his little threats anymore. "If you lead us to our doom on purpose, if you endanger Jane's life in any way, I swear I will kill you. Don't think I won't."

His tone is harsh, and his eyes are so blue, like a storm raging on a sea. He means every word he says.

"Yes, I know, I have heard that quite a few times today", Loki answers, his tone clipped. The heavy handcuffs clink against each other on his wrists, a reminder of what his place is now.

His face reveals nothing as he looks at Thor, his mask set, but under the façade he feels as if he has been cut wide open and left to bleed.

He should not be surprised that Thor has finally given up on him, for he has hurt Thor so many times, thrown every offer of help back to his face and done everything to disown him, to prove that they are not brothers anymore. But for some reason he is, even though he knows he should not be, he knows that it is absolutely pathetic. After all this time, after everything he has done, he still clings to sentiment.

Despite all his actions, he never really thought that Thor would turn his back on him. He did not do that when Loki tried to destroy Jötunheim nor when he first attacked Midgard, and though he did not realise it then, Loki was almost glad of it because it meant that there was someone who still cared for him. He wanted to push Thor away, but at the same time he wanted to keep him close, and it was all so confusing, he did not know what is was that he truly wanted. He still does not know.

They have been together since they were only tiny babies in their cradles, two sides of the same coin, two halves of a whole. They were the opposites of each other, one like the sun and the other like the moon, one a warrior and one a sorcerer, but their differences did not matter for when they were together they were one. Brothers connected to each other with bonds that could not be broken, their fates intertwined. They were Thor and Loki, Loki and Thor, and Loki used to think that nothing would ever tear them apart, that they would be together forever and ever. What a fool he was.

They are not brothers, they never were, and it seems that Thor has finally given up on the lie he so long forced himself to believe. He has grown tired of all this, of the path of hate and destruction, of the monster wearing the skin of his once-brother. Thor no longer wants to waste his love on Loki, he has moved on and finally learned his lesson, realised that the brother he had is dead and never coming back.

It should mean nothing, it should not hurt, but oh, it does.

_You caused this_, a voice whispers in Loki's head,_ you pushed him away. Now you are free of the lies they fed you all those years. Why aren't you happy? Isn't this what you wanted?_

_Yes, no_, he thinks, unable to tell which one is a lie. _I don't know_.

Loki told himself that it was what he had to do, that he had to sever all ties to those he once called his kin. His family no longer existed, not after everything they did to him, not after all those lies. He had no father or mother or brother, and he told himself that he did not need any of them and that he would be better off alone. Nothing could hurt him alone.

More than anything he wanted to hate Thor, and it should have been easy to do that for he has always been in Thor's shadow, hidden by his brightness. All those years he stood behind Thor and said nothing when he was pushed aside and reminded of his place, when Thor and his friends mocked him for not being like them and dismissed his every accomplishment. He tolerated it, thinking that perhaps it would someday end, that someday they would see that he too was worthy, but it never happened. It felt as though he might as well have not existed at all, and year by year his bitterness and envy grew until he could not take it anymore and it all burst out and destroyed everything.

Thor never knew what he did, how much he really hurt Loki, and Loki will not forgive him for that, he cannot forgive. He has harboured his anger in his heart for a long time, fed it and watched as it grew and allowed it to take control of him, but even though he tried to hate Thor, he really tried, he just could not stop himself from loving him too.

It is an endless cycle, one that has no ending or beginning. He hates and loves Thor, and though he knows that he should stop and let it all go, push away the love he has left, he cannot. He thought he could, but he was only lying to himself. That is what he does best, it seems, he lies and lies to everyone, even to himself, and he does not even realise it.

Loki cannot let Thor go. They share no blood, they are not even of the same race, but they are connected with bonds much stronger than that. Thor was (_is_) his brother, and he will be his destruction, Loki knows that. He hates him, but he loves him more and he loves him too much.

Only fools love, he knows, but everyone is a fool and Loki is no better than them.

He shakes his head slightly, trying to get rid of his thoughts because it is too late to cry over the past now, too late to go back to what once was. He forces a smile, the corners of his mouth turning up, but it is more of a grimace.

"I have no interest in killing you or your woman, but if you want to get out of here alive and most of your limbs intact, you will shut up and do what I tell you to do. Understood?" Loki says, hoping that Thor did not notice anything.

Thor is silent for a moment, looking at him with a thunderous expression, but then he sighs, his shoulders sinking, and nods. He looks tired then, dark circles around his eyes, and his clothes are torn and rumpled. He appears more serious than Loki has ever seen him, much older, and for a moment he looks so much like Odin that Loki feels his hands starting to shake. But then it is gone, and Loki starts to wonder how much Thor really has changed.

"I will do as you instruct", Thor says quietly.

_But I will not trust you._

Loki knows that, has known for a long time, but it does not make it any easier. He turns his gaze away.

Thor casts him a last glance before heading to the bow where the mortal lies. She is still sleeping or unconscious, Loki is not sure which one, and her face is ashen, small beads of sweat lingering on her forehead. She is shivering despite the blanket wrapped around her, and it makes her look even smaller than she is. Loki wonders how long she will be able to hold on.

Sometimes she twitches in her sleep and her mouth forms silent words that are not hers, and Loki knows that the Aether is tearing her mind apart. Slower than he thought, for she is surprisingly strong, but she is still only a mere mortal and her mind cannot fight the power that has the ability to destroy the whole universe. Her mind is shattering piece by piece, the Aether consuming her, and if they do not manage to free her soon, it will crush her and leave nothing of her behind.

She looks so very fragile, and Thor sits beside her as if protecting her from all harm, touching her shoulders gently. He watches her with eyes that are filled with worry and something else, something that makes Loki want to break something.

It is sickeningly clear that Thor has deep affection for her, maybe even love. He has had his fair share of affairs with servant girls and high born ladies, he was never too picky about them, but they were always fleeting affairs, never anything serious. Thor was quick to kick them out of his bed when he had got what he wanted from them, for he cared little for any of them. To him it was all about satisfying his lust, he did not seek a relationship. Frigga disapproved deeply of his actions, deeming them disrespectful, but Thor did what he wanted and nothing she said changed anything.

But this mortal woman is different. Thor has not known her for long, but he has already given her the key to his heart, and she holds it tightly in her hand and has no intention of letting it go. She is who Thor cares about, and now that she exists, there is no room for Loki anymore.

When Thor was banished for his rash actions against Jötunheim, and Loki was crowned a king in his stead, he would sometimes sit on the throne that did not feel right and watch as his brother tried to learn how to cope in an entirely unfamiliar realm. Thor seemed so out of his element then, all his radiance gone with his powers. Stripped of his godhood, he was no better than the mortals around him, and though Loki never intended to get Thor banished, never intended it to get that far, he could not help but enjoy it.

Thor was always so sure about himself, that he was the perfect son and prince and warrior, and there was nothing that could make him think otherwise. He was the epitome of a spoiled brat, and no wonder for he had lived all his life in a palace with servants to fulfil his every whim and people to fawn over him constantly. Everyone loved him, and never had he been punished severely for anything, only small slaps on the wrists while Loki got usually all the blame for their misdeeds, but when he marched into Jötunheim with every intention of killing those monsters he so hated, Odin had finally had enough of his son's ignorance and arrogance. He no longer tolerated Thor's brash actions, and for the first time in his life Thor understood what being the disappointing son really felt like.

Loki can still remember the look in Thor's eyes when he was stripped of his powers, of everything that made him a god. He looked so utterly crushed that Loki wanted to reach for him, to comfort him and follow him so that he would not be alone, but he did nothing, only stood there and watched as his brother was banished. It was what Thor deserved, he told himself firmly and ignored the guilt that kept gnawing his soul.

Now that he knows what his little ploy to get the Jötnar into Asgard and teach Thor a lesson caused, what it shattered, he wishes that he had never done that. Wishes that he had not let his envy and bitterness destroy everything.

Loki looks at the woman as she sleeps and wonders how she, a mortal, a stranger, managed to accomplish so easily what he had failed to do for centuries. In a few days she changed Thor completely, changed him for the better, and it stung like a knife, because no matter how hard Loki tried to make Thor to listen to him, to recognise him as his equal, to see him, nothing he ever did was enough. Thor never understood, he did not want to change, and Loki had started to believe that he never would.

But of course it had to be her who changed him. Of course.

Loki wants to hate her too, but he does not, not really. She is not of much importance to him, for she will die in a hundred years, and her short life will never mean anything. She burns brightly now, but sooner or later her light fades out, and then she will be forgotten. She is only a mortal and Thor is a god, and their fates are too different. What they have will never last.

No, he does not hate her. He hates Thor for choosing her over him.

Thor looks at her the same way he used to look at Loki when they were young, long before everything shattered. Thor would look at him with bright eyes and a smile on his lips, look at Loki as if he were something important, something precious, and in those moments Loki never doubted Thor's love for him. Though the moments faded away when they grew apart, Loki never forgot them.

Although it is too late to go back, Loki knows that there was a time when it was all so simple, a time when Thor really loved him and he loved Thor. It does him little good now because nothing can be fixed anymore, but Loki still holds the memory in his heart and cannot let go even though he knows he should.

He thinks of their childhood days then, of summer evenings spent in their mother's garden, their heads on her lap and her fingers tangled in their hair, of stormy nights when Loki sneaked into Thor's bed because he was afraid of thunder and Thor wrapped his arms around him and held him until morning, of wide smiles and tight hugs and two small hands together, sun-kissed skin against pale. They were so young then, little godlings with all the worlds before them.

For some reason he also thinks of the time they stole Odin's helmet. He had left his helmet to his study, and seeing the opportunity, they grabbed it and ran away before anyone saw them. They went to the throne room that was empty, and they managed to climb to their father's seat after a few attempts. Their short legs did not even reach the floor when they sat on it, their small feet dangling in the air, and it was so exciting that they could not stop giggling as they put their father's helmet onto their heads. It was far too big for either of them, but that did not stop them from pretending to be kings. They held each other's hands as images appeared in their heads, images of their future as the brother-kings of Asgard, great and glorious and loved by all. A promise was made then, a promise that they would be together for all eternity.

They both sat on the throne, side by side, and Odin found them later that way. He stopped before the throne and looked at them with his one eye, his expression unreadable, and with bowed heads they climbed down and handed the helmet to him, waiting for their punishment that was sure to come. But Odin said nothing, only walked past them and sat down. Then he beckoned them to come closer, and when they did, he lifted them up like they weighed nothing and placed them on his lap.

They sat there for a long time, on the all-seeing seat of Hlidskjalf in the hall of gods, the king and his sons. Odin showed them all the realms between the branches of the tree, the distant corners of the universe, even the secrets of the stars. They watched as worlds lived and changed and died, and Loki remembers thinking how beautiful it was to see, to know, to feel the power in his veins.

Odin held them in his arms and told the story of life to them. With a quiet voice he spoke of the birth and death of everything, that there is a beginning and an end, and Thor and Loki listened to him with wide eyes even though they were too young to understand much of it. There must always be balance, Odin told them, the balance of life and death and lightness and darkness. If there is no balance, the tree will fall and Ragnarök will destroy them all.

He told them stories until they fell asleep in his arms, and then he carried them to their beds. Loki woke up for a while at some point, and he can still remember how Odin smiled at him when he covered him with a blanket, full of honest love, and placed a gentle kiss on his brow and whispered goodnight. It is one of the warmest memories he has of Odin, and sometimes Loki finds himself thinking of it even though he does not want to.

Those days are barely nothing more than a memory now, a life that used to be, beautiful but so fragile that it did not take long for the cracks to show. Loki thinks of what he has lost, and he feels like laughing and crying at the same time.

It has been so long since he fell from the ruins of the Bifröst, and nothing is the same anymore, everything has changed, threads of fate tangling and breaking as the world tree shook. Loki never intended it to get this far. He was the start, the catalyst, but somewhere along the way he lost control. He became nothing more than a pawn to be used and then discarded when he was no longer of use.

He fell for a long time in the void, in a place where there was nothing, not even time. Loki has known the ways between the realms since he was a young boy, the paths along the branches so familiar that he could find them without even looking, but this time he had no control over it. He tried to reach out but he could not, the void was too strong for him to escape. It held him tightly in its arms, and he fell and fell, thinking that it would never end, that he would be there for eternity.

He has seen things no one else has ever seen, learned the ancient secrets of the universe and heard the song of the tree, but he still does not know. Does not know who he is, does not know what his purpose is, does not know _why_. He thought he knew, but it was a lie, everything was a lie.

A shadow of a prince, a sorcerer, a boy once called Loki, that is all he is. But never him, not anymore. It is too late for that.

He remembers the blue spreading on his skin, ugly and terrible, the colour of a monster. It washed away all he had ever thought himself to be and revealed the lie that was his entire life, and Loki had never been more lost than then. Everything was taken from him until only the monster was left, his true form, and when he fell, he was almost relieved. He thought that it would finally be over then.

He quickly pushes his thoughts away. He cannot be weak, not now.

Loki leans on the boat and turns his gaze to Thor. It has been a long time since he had the chance to really look at his not-brother, and now that he looks, he does not know what to think of him.

Thor is different. He is not the arrogant and self-centered boy he once was, the boy who would have been more than happy to wage war, to fight day and night with blooded hands and a laugh on his lips. They boy with golden hair and starry eyes who thought that all the realms would bow at his feet, that there was nothing he would not be able achieve for he was a son of Odin and a soon-to-be king.

Precious, golden Thor, to whom everyone was so quick to give their love when they only offered Loki cruel words and mocking smiles behind his back. He was never good enough for the Aesir because they already had Thor, the perfect prince, and they did not need Loki with his effeminate pursuit of seidr and cowardly ways. It was always Thor who got everything. The throne, the people's love, their father's love, all Loki might once have wanted but never got.

But as Loki watches Thor he thinks that no, Thor is not the same anymore. The boy he used to be no longer exists, there is a man in his place now, a man Loki barely knows. They both have changed, one rose and one fell, once brothers, now only strangers. Loki wonders if it was always supposed to be so.

The day is dawning as they sail through the air, ruins of the old war below them. Destroyed Elven ships and rusty weapons lie on the ground, and when he looks closer, Loki thinks that he sees the dusty gleam of Aesir armour buried under the ashes and dark sand. The war Bor brought with him laid waste to Svartalfheim and its people, and the whole realm is nothing more than a graveyard now.

"We must prepare ourselves", Loki says quietly, knowing that Thor will hear him. "Malekith might already be here."

It all could be over in just few moments. If their plan is successful, if they manage to destroy the Aether, all the realms will be saved. Malekith has no true power of his own, and what is left of his people is nothing more than his dogs without any power of their own. The Aether is the key to all of Malekith's plans, and if he does not have it, with Mjölnir and magic Thor and Loki will kill them all.

"It all depends on us now", Loki continues and meets Thor's eyes. "There is no second chance for us."

He knows that they cannot fail this, and though Thor does not want to believe it, he knows it too.

Thor nods slowly, his face solemn. "I will do everything that is in my power to put an end to this. I swear it."

Just a few years ago Thor would have only laughed and told him that he should not worry, that he could handle it easily. Losing was not simply an option for him then, and he thought himself to be invincible, that death could not touch him, and he rushed into battles without a second thought. But now he has grown much wiser, for he has seen that everyone can be killed, even gods.

Silence falls between them, heavy and suffocating, and Loki resists the urge to pace around the boat. He clenches his fist and opens it, and a small flame appears, green and bright, his seidr dancing around his fingertips. The flame flickers in the wind as he holds it in his hands, dwindling but never dying, and somehow the feeling of his seidr soothes him. Creating fire was the first spell he ever learned.

He feels his seidr running through his veins, strong and alive, but he cannot harness it properly. It has been a long time since he last had full control of his seidr, for the cell Odin so mercifully gave him instead of just simply executing him right away was full of restraining runes and spells, and they dampened his seidr. Not entirely, for Odin underestimated him, but they made his magic unstable and hard to use. He could do small and useless spells and illusions without much trouble, but he did not have nearly enough power left to escape, that Odin had ensured, and Thor did the same by putting the restraining handcuffs around his wrists. Loki can still do something, but nothing useful enough to use against Malekith, not until Thor takes the cuffs off.

Thor raises his head and casts a glance to the lightening sky, and then he looks at Loki again and sighs, the sound fading away with the wind. "I hope this works, Loki."

_So do I_, Loki almost says, but stops the words from escaping his mouth. "It will."

It has to. This is a battle they cannot lose.

"I am ready, then", Thor says, and Mjölnir hums in his hand, waiting for the battle. Loki hopes that it will not betray Thor, for this is the time he needs it the most.

"Good", Loki says. "So am I."

He has little love left for Asgard, he has no home anymore, but he will not let Malekith fill the realms with darkness and start the end of everything. He will not.

Thor lifts his hand and touches the mortal's cheek with surprising gentleness. She lets out a small breath and shivers but does not wake up yet, only turns a bit and wraps her arms more tightly around her body. Thor swallows and closes his eyes for a brief moment.

"I never meant to put Jane in danger", he says. His voice is unusually quiet, but Loki still hears him.

"It was not your fault", Loki says before he can stop himself. He curses himself for sounding like he cares.

It truly was not Thor's fault that they are here now. If his woman had not stuck her nose where it did not belong, had not meddled with powers she could never hope to understand, none of this would have happened. She would be still in Midgard, Loki would be still in his cell and Frigga would be still alive.

Thor is quiet for a while. "I will not let her die", he says, and his face is pained as he meets Loki's eyes. "I can't."

Loki wants to say something cruel to that, something that hurts, but he does not. He looks away.

Thor vows that he will not lose her, that he can save her, and Loki knows the reason why. Thor refuses to fail anymore because he already failed once, and it was a heavy price they paid for it.

It is because of him that their mother is gone. Thor was supposed to protect her from all harm, save her, but he did not, he was not the hero everyone thought him to be. Loki trusted Thor to keep her safe, but he failed, and now she is dead and never coming back, gone to a place where he cannot follow her.

Loki did not even get to say farewell. He rotted in his cell while she died, her life bleeding from her body along with her blood, and he was not allowed to attend her funeral where they put her in a boat fit for a queen and sent her to sail away to Valhalla, the flames dancing around her as the stars welcomed her to their midst. He could not touch her one last time, could not apologise for what he did, and he hates Odin for that.

The last words he ever said to her are all he can think of, how cruel he was, and he hopes with all his heart that she saw through him. He cannot bear the thought of her thinking that he did not love her anymore.

Despite all the lies, Frigga was his mother and he was her son, and nothing could change that. But it took Loki too long to understand that blood did not mean anything, and then it was already late. She was dead, and there was nothing Loki could do to bring her back. He could only scream until no sounds came of out his mouth, tears blurring his eyes and dropping to the floor, and he laughed and cried and broke into pieces that he can never put together anymore.

He will never see her again, not even when he dies, for the doors of Valhalla are closed for him. The hall of those who died with honour, the place for the brave souls that offer their life in battle is not for him, has never been. There is too much red on his hands, and he cannot wipe it away.

The ship of the Elves appears not far from them, large and threatening as it floats in the air, and Loki is not even a bit surprised. It did not take them long to find them, and Loki did not expect that it would, for Malekith is somehow connected to the Aether and he desires it so much that he would follow it through the universe if he had to.

The boat starts to descend steadily as Loki carefully pilots it to the ground. Thor wakes the woman by shaking her shoulders gently, and with a quiet groan she blinks her eyes a few times and then scrambles to her feet with his help, looking like she does not quite know where she is. Her hair is in a mess, and when she runs her hand through it to get it away from her face, Loki sees that her hand is shaking.

She turns, and for a moment her eyes are filled with darkness, the deep chaos inside her mind breaking through, but then it is gone as quickly as it came and her eyes return to their normal brown colour. Thor lets out a choked breath.

"Jane…" he starts to say, but cannot seem to be able to say anything else. He falls silent.

"What?" she asks and frowns. "Why are you looking at me like that, Thor? Is something wrong?"

She seems to be completely oblivious to what is happening inside her own head, that she is falling apart, and Loki almost laughs.

The shadow of a smile Thor forces on his face is horribly fake. "Everything is fine, Jane", he tells her.

He sounds like he tries to convince himself more than her. She looks at him and furrows her brows, for even though she is mortal she is not stupid, far from it, but she chooses to stay silent. Her eyes flicker back and forth between Thor and Loki, her jaw tensing, but then she shakes her head and sighs.

"Okay", she says quietly after a while and lifts her hand to touch Thor's arm. He takes it and holds it tightly, bringing it up so that he can press a light kiss on her knuckles. "Okay."

They stand there, looking at each other's eyes with their hands clasped together, Thor towering over her like a giant. They do nothing else, no words needed, but it is still somehow intimate and for some reason Loki feels as if he were prying, as if he were looking at something he is not supposed to see. He clears his throat.

"We don't have any time to waste", he says. "Unless you have something more important to do, I suggest that we move on now."

They turn to look at him. "Yes, let's do that", Jane answers after a moment.

Her eyes meet his, and though her face is guarded, there is no fear there, and her gaze does not waver when she looks at him. She does not trust him, which is a wise decision, for he cannot be trusted, but she is not afraid of him. She should be.

She knows what he did in Midgard, how he conquered and killed and destroyed, but now she and everyone else seem to think that the time he spent in a cell has made him tame, that he is not dangerous anymore, and Loki does not know what gives them such delusions. They should know better than that, for he is more dangerous than ever right now because he has nothing left to lose anymore. He has only so much to gain.

Loki is tempted to show her the monster buried deep under his skin, to show her what he is truly capable of. He wonders if he could make her scream.

He smiles then, sharp and wide, his teeth revealed. "Very well, lady Foster."

Even with his hands tied he jumps easily out of the boat, landing on the soft ground, and with Thor's help she manages to follow. She looks around as if for the first time, the hems of her dress swirling in the wind, and her expression is suddenly horrified.

"God, what has happened here?" she asks as her gaze moves across the barren plain. Everything she sees is in ruins, broken ships and bones and blood, remains of a ghost realm that has been dead and forgotten for thousands and thousands of years.

Thor follows her gaze. "The war between Asgard and Svartalfheim."

"The one your father talked about?" Jane asks, and Thor nods.

"Malekith tried to use the Aether to bring darkness to the realms, and King Bor, my grandfather, declared war on him. It was a long battle, and we won it in the end, but Svartalfheim never recovered from it."

Jane gestures at the debris around them with her hand. "And all this was caused by it?"

She sounds like she finds it hard to believe that a war could cause a destruction like this, but she is just a mortal. What does she know about battle and war? She has never been on a battlefield, never seen the blood flow all around her, never heard the cries of the warriors as they lay dying on the ground with their innards spilling out of stomachs. She knows nothing about the price of a war. Loki knows, and he wishes he did not.

Thor sighs. "When Malekith saw that they were losing the battle, he sacrificed his people by ordering them to destroy their ships", he tells her. "Only he and a few his soldiers survived."

"That's horrible!" Jane exclaims, her face filled with shock and disgust. "How could he do that to his own people?"

Loki thinks of Jötunheim. How many of them did he kill? Hundreds, perhaps even thousands, he does not quite know or even care. The Bifrost struck them with all of its unleashed power, destroying everything it touched, killing those who were his true kin. A race of monsters, they were nothing more than that, and they deserved to be wiped out. Loki touches the palm of his hand and remembers blue.

"Malekith was desperate", Thor answers, "and the Aether meant more to him than the lives of his people."

"We have to stop him", Jane says. She looks delicate and frail, but her face is alight with determination as she speaks, the wind that is blowing through the realm causing a blush to her cheeks, and for the first time Loki might understand what Thor sees in her. She is unlike the women in Asgard in many ways, but she shares their courage, and even though Loki does not like her, he respects her for her bravery.

Thor smiles at her, the corners of his mouth turning up a bit, and it is an honest smile, the first one in a while. "We will", he assures.

They start to walk towards the ship of the Elves. Loki walks in front of them, leading, and they follow him, Thor's arms wrapped tightly around Jane's waist. His other hand holds Mjölnir, ever vigilant, and Loki knows that Thor is expecting him to try to do something, even though he has no reason to do so. He could try to escape, yes, but that would be completely useless because the handcuffs dampen his seidr, and he is not going to give Thor the satisfaction of catching him. He will make his move when it is the right time, and not a second too early.

He walks in silence, keeping a close eye to their surroundings because they do not need any unexpected surprises along the way. Though he tries to ignore it, he still hears Thor and Jane talk quietly to each other, and he finds it strange how attentively he listens to her. She talks about her theories of the universe, her voice exited and animate, and though Thor does not probably understand much of what she says, he tries to converse with her with enthusiasm that is not faked. He never did that with Loki.

The pale sun has risen to the sky, and it shines dimly on the ragged mountains and dusty plains. There is nothing alive there except them, only the harsh landscape and the ruins of the war lying scattered on the ground. Loki does not know what Svaralfheim was like before the war, because even the ancient tomes in Asgard have little information of the realm of the Dark Elves and he has never been interested in it, but now it is not much. Isolated and abandoned by all the other realms, almost all of its people gone, it is too damaged to ever thrive again.

"Loki", Thor says behind him when they have walked for a while. Loki does not stop.

"Yes?" he answers without turning to look at Thor, his eyes fixed on the ship in the distance as he tries to anticipate what Malekith is going to do. He has little patience left for Thor unless he has actually something important to say.

Thor hesitates for a moment before speaking again, swallowing loudly. "When this is all over, if we succeed, I… I will ask Father to ease your punishment."

Loki is glad that Thor does not see his face, because his mouth stretches into a vicious grin and he has to stop himself from laughing.

He thought that Thor had learned his lesson, but he is truly a fool if he thinks that Loki has any intention of returning to his cell. As soon as his shackles are removed and their mission is complete, he will be gone. It is a risk, for Odin will send Thor and his best warriors to hunt him, and that they will do like dogs with a taste for blood, and if he gets caught, there is no one left to beg mercy for him. But it is a risk he is willing to take because he will not go back ever again.

He will run through the universe if he has to, but nothing will ever make him return to being a prisoner, to being buried and left to rot for all eternity, forgotten and abandoned by all. If he goes back, he might as well be dead.

"How thoughtful of you", he says dryly, still not turning to look at Thor. "You could start by getting me a bigger cell and better meals. Oh, and perhaps even a day off every now and then if I behave well enough. I would surely appreciate that."

Loki feels Thor's hand on his shoulder, heavy and warm, and then he is wrenched backwards and Thor is gripping him tightly by his arms, his expression angry. It makes him think of the time when he caused Sif's hair to turn black.

They were quite young then, just out of childhood, and Loki had already then begun to feel like he did not belong there. Thor had his friends that fawned over him and were like him, and he did not need his bookish and boring little brother. He spent almost all of his time with his with them, and he was especially close to Sif.

She was the daughter of some lord who had a seat in the king's council, and although she was expected to be like all the other high-born girls and attend lessons of seidr and etiquette, to become a well-behaved lady, she chose to become a warrior instead. When she first came to the training grounds with ill-fitting trousers and boots too big for her, with her pretty face and golden hair reaching the small of her back, everyone except Thor and Loki laughed at her. Her face flushed in anger, her dark eyes narrowing, but she did not run away in tears as they expected her to do. She stood her ground, looking like she wanted to hit them, and that was when Thor took her under his wing. He admired her courage and determination and decided that she could become a warrior too.

Loki never liked Sif much. She always followed Thor everywhere he went, tailing loyally behind him with the three idiots that even then called themselves Warriors Three, a little group of lackeys that Thor so enjoyed having. But even though she was among Thor's closest friends, the whispers behind her back never stopped. Many doubted her abilities, saying that a girl could not be a warrior, and that only made her try harder. So eager to prove herself, she seemed to think that she could do it by pointing out how bad Loki was.

When he was younger, Loki hated training. He hated that he that he could barely lift a sword, that he tired so easily when everyone else could go on for hours, that he was so much worse than any of them. He tried to learn, he truly did, for he knew how disappointed Father would be if he did not, but it was hard. Fighting did not feel right for him, he would have rather spent his days in the library practising spells, and the others saw that. They laughed at him every time he failed, even Thor, and Sif was always the one that laughed the loudest.

She was better than him and she knew it, and that was why she enjoyed sparring with him. Loki tried to fight back, but he always ended up lying in the dirt with her spear held on his throat and a mocking smile on her lips, the sound of laughter ringing around them. She did everything she could to humiliate him, to show that even a girl could be a better warrior than a prince of Asgard, and when she openly said that he brought shame on his realm, Loki turned her hair black.

It was a malicious prank, born out of anger and hurt, and he enjoyed it immensely for Sif had always prided herself on her hair that was as bright as gold itself. When she woke up and it was suddenly as black as the feathers of a raven, she refused to come out her room for days, her ugly sobs echoing around the walls. Thor found out soon that it was Loki who did it, and he slammed him into a wall, holding him by his throat, and demanded him to fix it. It was the first time in his life that Loki was truly afraid of Thor.

"Don't throw my kindness back to my face, Loki", Thor snarls. Their faces are so close that Loki can see the different shades of blue in his eyes.

Loki laughs, loud and humourless, and breaks loose of Thor's grasp. "Kindness? Whatever kindness you think you are giving me, I have no need of it. I have managed just _fine_ without it."

Thor is quick to offer him his help now that Loki is being useful, but where was he when Loki was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison? Where was he when Loki sat in his cell and waited for him to come? He was not there, he did not care what happened to Loki, he never came. Loki waited and waited, letting himself hope, until it became clear that Thor wanted nothing to do with him anymore, that no one else but Frigga cared for him. And when she died, Loki accepted that he would be alone for the rest of his life.

Loki does not know why Thor wants suddenly to help him now, but if Thor thinks that Loki needs his help, his crumbs of pity for the poor prisoner, he is severely wrong.

"I am trying to help you!" Thor exclaims. "Why is it so hard for you to accept my help? Can't you just once take it?"

"It is too late!" Loki shouts suddenly, his face twisting with rage that is burning in his veins. Startled, Thor takes a step back. "You can't help me anymore! Can't you see that? Nothing you do will change anything, you can't make things right anymore!"

He is far too gone to ever turn back, the past is closed for him, and even though he wants, he cannot change it.

Thor looks at him, his mouth open and his face shocked, unable to say anything. Loki wants nothing more right now than to hurt him.

"What good does your help do to me now?" Loki spits, his hands shaking, and he clenches them into fists. He feels so angry.

_Too little, too late,_ he thinks.

"Loki- " Thor starts to say, but Loki is not done yet, not even close. He laughs again, and this time it sounds more like a sob, but he does not care.

"Why couldn't you help me before?" he asks, his voice barely louder than a whisper now. "I needed you, and you just turned away. All those years, Thor. Why couldn't you?"

The words are pouring out of his mouth, uncontrolled, like an explosion, and though he does not want to say these things, does not want Thor to know how he feels, he cannot stop them. His chest is heaving and tears are pricking his eyes, threatening to spill over, but he does not let them fall. He cannot let Thor see him cry, not again.

"Don't make this my fault!" Thor says, and now he is shouting. Jane is standing somewhere behind him, looking like she does not know what to do, but they both ignore her. "I never knew!"

"You should have known! You were my brother!" Loki screams.

_Why couldn't you just look at me for once,_ he cries in his mind,_ why did you push me away? I only wanted to be your equal, that would have been enough for me. Why couldn't you let me have even that?_

It is true, he would have been content with that. The throne never held any appeal to him because he knew that it would suit him ill, he knew that he did not want to rule. He was always aware that Thor would become the king, not he, and he had accepted that long ago.

What grated him the most was that everyone always assumed that it would be Thor who would get the throne. They dismissed Loki completely, even though Thor was not better than him and he was not ready for the responsibility of ruling a realm. Loki would have been, but he was never even an option.

Now that he knows the truth of his origins, it all makes perfect sense. Of course Odin would not let a Jötunn rule Asgard. He could not trust the realm to the hands of a monster.

When he was younger Loki thought that Odin favoured Thor simply because he was better in everything, and he vowed to try harder to gain his father's approval, but it was never possible for him. He could not compete with Thor, a true Odinson with the blood of Asgard in his veins, for no matter how much Odin claimed to love him, Loki was the son of his enemy, saved by only pity and greed, just another stolen relic in his halls. Nothing more than a pawn in the end, a puppet in strings.

Thor does not still know the truth. He has no idea that the brother he grew up with was never his brother, does not see the ice hiding under Loki's false skin. Odin and Frigga never apparently told him, for if he knew, Loki would not be here right now. After all, Thor did promise to hunt the monsters down and slay them all. Though he claims to have changed, centuries of hatred are not removed so easily, and if he finds out what Loki really is, there will be no ties of brotherhood to protect Loki from him anymore.

"You never said anything!" Thor accuses. "How was I supposed to know that you weren't fine?"

"So everything is my fault now?" Loki spits out.

Of course Thor would say that. He blames Loki for all that has happened, that he destroyed everything, but he is wrong, it was not Loki's fault, it was not. Thor is just as much to blame as he is.

Thor grabs his shoulders and shakes him, his eyes burning like coals, and electricity crackles in the air. "It was you who let go!" he roars, and it is almost as if something inside him breaks. "I had you, you were safe, but you let go!"

His face is filled with pain and sorrow, and Loki thinks of the day when it all ended, thinks of his hand around Gungnir as he dangled above the gaping void that opened up to swallow him, of his not-father's words _(No, Loki)_, of falling. But most of all he thinks of Thor's face when he let the spear slip through his fingers, the horror and the desperation and the anguish, and he remembers thinking fleetingly that Thor did love him after all.

Sometimes he thinks of what could have happened if he had not let go, if he had allowed Thor to save him, thinks of things that could have been and could be. It makes his heart ache.

"I watched you fall", Thor says, his thumb brushing Loki's cheek, and his voice cracks. "You fell and I could do nothing to stop it, could only watch as I lost you. I thought you dead, and you cannot even try to understand how much it hurt, how much I mourned for you. How could you do that to us, Loki? How could you just throw your life away and leave us behind?"

Loki tries to find words he could use to hurt Thor, to make him bleed, but he does not have any, all he has now is a feeling of emptiness spreading in his body and making him numb. He does not know what to say.

Thor clenches his eyes shut for a moment. "I had never felt such a sorrow. All I could do was to think about you, and night after night I dreamed of you letting go and falling, and I woke up screaming for you, but you weren't there, you were gone. I couldn't save you."

"It would have been better if I had died", Loki whispers quietly. Thor does not hear him, or he pretends that he did not hear.

"Why?" Thor breathes out and looks Loki straight in the eye, and Loki cannot turn away. He feels trapped, like there is nowhere to go now. "Why did you do all of this? Tell me, Loki. I deserve to know."

It is the first time Thor has ever asked these questions. Loki does not have an answer.

"You should know already", is all he says before he breaks free of Thor's hold and turns and almost runs away. Thor does not follow him.

His hands are shaking and he wraps them around himself. It is hard to think, his thoughts are swarming in his head and he cannot grasp any of them. He tries to calm down, tries to forget, but he cannot. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath and pretends to be fine.

He should not have done that. Should have stayed quiet or said something else, anything else but that. He feels so exposed right now, like he let Thor see everything he had ever tried to hide. He does not know why he did that.

Walking quickly, Loki tries to put some distance between him and Thor, who stays behind him but does not try to catch him. Loki feels Thor's gaze on his back, heavy and intense, as if he is trying to see through him. He walks faster.

He does not how long he walks, the sun climbing higher to the dark sky, his footprints visible on the sand until the wind wipes them away, removing all traces of him. He stops only when he reaches a cliff and waits for Thor and Jane, fiddling with his handcuffs. Below him is a vast plain, spreading out everywhere he looks, and Malekith is there, standing in front of his ship, and the other Elves are staying close to him.

Thor says a few quiet words to Jane, who steals a quick glance at Loki, and then she nods. Thor tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear, and then he approaches Loki slowly, his expression cautious as if Loki is a wild animal that could lash out any moment. Thor does not come very close, choosing to keep his distance, and Loki is grateful for that.

Looking at Loki, Thor takes a deep breath and gathers his words. Loki refuses to meet his eyes.

"Loki", Thor starts slowly, and he sounds like he has thought carefully of what he is going to say. "Everything has changed, we both have, and I cannot say that I understand how it has happened. I have tried, but I can't. I don't know how you could do all those things that you did, I don't know what broke you. I don't know how I lost you."

"I wish I knew, but I don't, and I cannot change anything", he continues. "I cannot fool myself any longer with false thoughts that we could return to what once was. That is not possible, and I have been forced to accept that. I wish it wasn't so, but it is."

Loki shows no signs of listening, he does not even look at Thor, but Thor keeps talking.

"But even though it probably means nothing to you, I want you to know that I am sorry for all I have ever done to hurt you", he says. "I know that you won't believe anything I say, but it was never my intention. I have realised that I wasn't the brother I should have been. I thought I was, but instead I wronged you in so many ways, and I never saw how much I hurt you. I wasn't there when you needed me, and I don't expect you to forgive me for that, but I am sorry", he says quietly. "I truly am."

Once Loki would have given everything to hear those words from Thor, but now he only feels tired, so tired. He wishes that Thor did not make this any harder than it already is.

He stays quiet, not wanting to say anything, and for a moment Thor looks like he could reach out and touch him, his hand hovering hesitantly in the air, but in the end he thinks better of it and does nothing. Loki is relieved.

Having nothing more to say, Thor begins to walk away, but he stops suddenly after only a few steps. Something makes Loki lift his gaze from the ground and look at Thor, whose gaze is fixed on him. His expression softens a bit, but there is still sadness in his eyes. Loki misses the boy who always smiled.

"I tried to persuade Father to let you say goodbye to Mother", Thor tells him. "I know how much you loved her."

There is no pity in his voice, only sincerity, and then he turns away before Loki can say anything, his cape swirling in the air, a bright flash in the darkness. He returns to where Jane waits for him, and Loki is alone again. He feels cold.

He thinks of Frigga. She lied to him as much as everyone else, but he could never hate her. She taught him everything he knew about seidr, kissed his bruised knees and held him in her arms when he cried because he had once again failed in his training, whispered sweets songs into his ears when they sat together on her balcony and looked at the stars. Loki could always tell her everything that burdened him, more comfortable with her than with anyone else, and to her he was just as much her child as Thor was. She loved him with all her heart, and Loki cannot remember when was the last time that he told her that he loved her.

His hand touches the dagger hidden inside his armour, the familiar cool metal comforting under his fingertips, and he allows himself a small smile. The Elves will soon regret the day the decided to attack Asgard. He will get his vengeance.

_Trust my rage_, he thinks again, his hands held above his heart. _I promise, Mother._

* * *

As the shards of the Aether rise from the dust, Loki knows that their plan has failed.

Screeching, the Aether reforms and surges into Malekith, who has his arms wide open and his head thrown back as he welcomes the power he has desired for thousands of years. When he opens his eyes again, they are full of darkness.

Loki can only watch as Thor, unable to accept defeat so easily, storms after the Elves with his hammer held tightly in his hand. They try to attack him, but their attempts are useless for Thor swats them aside with Mjölnir as if they are nothing, his expression furious. His steps quickening, he runs, trying to get to Malekith, to stop him before it is too late.

The beast turns around and takes something to its hand and throws it, and as it flies through the air towards them, Loki realises what it is. His eyes widening, he quickly pushes Jane out of the way, not caring if he hurts her, but it is the only thing he manages to do before he is caught by the vortex that appears in the air.

Panic fills him as he is dragged backwards, and Jane looks at him with horror and helplessness as he gets nearer and nearer to the vortex, able to only watch. Loki does everything he can to escape, his seidr raging inside him as if it is trying to pull him back, to protect him from the same fate again, but it is too late, he cannot fight anymore. The vortex is too strong for him, it has him in its grasp and it will not let him go. Loki reaches out with his hands, but there is no one to take them, no one to save him.

He cannot breathe, cannot think. No, not again, he cannot return to the darkness where there is nothing and everything, cannot fall alone all of eternity, cannot get lost when he just found the way back, not again. No, no, no, _no_-

Something slams into him, and Loki feels the air escaping his lungs as he gets thrown hard to the ground. He gasps, his whole body shaking, tremors running through his spine. Overwhelming relief washes over him, so strong that he feels like he could vomit, and his heart beats loudly in his chest, its pace uneven. He tries refrain from hyperventilating.

Flashes of the time he spent in the void appear in his mind. Loki has no words to explain what it felt like to fall through time and space itself, to fall and fall and never stop. There was no end there, not even a beginning. The tree wrapped its branches around him, held him tightly in its embrace, pulled and twisted and tore his mind apart until he could not take it anymore, until he was begging for death to take him.

He tries to tell himself that he is not there, that there is air around him and sand under him, not the never-ending abyss. He tells himself that he is safe, he is fine, nothing can hurt him. He is not there.

He cannot close his eyes, for if he does that, he will be lost again.

Loki sees Thor sprawled on the sand next to him. Their eyes meet, and there is a flicker of something in Thor's eyes as he looks at Loki, but it is gone before Loki can tell what it is. He only realises now that it was Thor who saved him.

They scramble to their feet, and Loki wants to say something, anything, but he finds no words, and then Thor swirls Mjölnir in his hand, his face determined, and takes off, rushing after the ship that is starting to leave. Loki watches as he goes and hopes, but Thor is suddenly stopped by the monstrous creature. He flies through the air and lands with a groan, the beast following him, and the ship rises to the sky and fades away. They have lost their chance.

The Dark Elves who did not leave with the ship inch closer to Loki, surrounding him from every direction, their weapons drawn as they circle him. Loki cannot see where Jane is, but he hopes that she had at least the sense to hide herself or run away. She has no chance of surviving if she stays.

The Elves take a step closer, their dead eyes fixed on him, black as the night, and he must look like an easy prey to them, for he is greatly outnumbered and has only a small dagger while they have highly advanced weapons. They seem to think that they can defeat him easily.

Loki twirls the dagger in his hand. He waits, counts in his head, one, two, three, and then they are attacking.

They are all stupid enough to attack at the same time, and Loki almost laughs aloud because it is ridiculously easy to get rid of them now, almost too easy. He twirls around them, dodging every single one of their attacks, dancing around them, fast like a whirlwind, and in return he slashes and cuts them with precision. He has never been a warrior in the same sense as Thor and his friends, but only a fool would think him to be helpless. He is more than capable of fighting, and the Elves are no match for him. They fall one by one, and he has no mercy for them.

The last Elf attacks him, a desperate attempt that is doomed to fail, and Loki cuts his throat open. Warm blood, dark and thick, gushes from the wound and coats Loki's hands. He flings the lifeless body to the ground to join the other corpses at his feet, a cruel smile on his lips. The Elves deserved everything they got.

Loki's eyes move across the empty wasteland in a search for Thor, and when he finds him, he feels his breath catching in his throat. Thor is fighting the beast, and he is losing.

Loki cannot recall a time when Thor was not victorious in battle. Even when they were young boys, barely out of childhood, Thor dominated the training grounds. Every weapon fell under his command, every opponent cowered before his might, and fighting is in his blood just as seidr is Loki's. He is a true warrior prince of the realm, and the Aesir have always loved him for it. Ever since he learned how to fight he has courted war. Battle calls to him, he thirsts for it, and Loki has always thought that with Mjölnir in his hand there is nothing Thor cannot defeat.

But he is losing now. The beast is no natural creature, it is born of dark and twisted seidr, and Thor cannot seem to find a way to kill it. Nothing he does, not even the power of Mjölnir, is able to cause any lasting harm. The creature continues to throw Thor around, and it is clear that Thor is tiring. His blows are getting weaker, his face more pained, and Loki can only stand and watch as Thor nears his death. He knows that Thor will not win this fight.

It would be so easy to turn away now and leave. Just a simple spell, a small rip in the universe, and Loki could slip through and be anywhere in the realms in a blink of an eye. Then he would be free of his shackles, of Asgard, of his past. He could bury himself completely, kill all that is left of a man once called Loki Odinson, and start his life anew. If he hides himself, if he is careful enough, they will never ever find him again.

All he has to do is leave. Thor is the only thing standing between Loki and his freedom, the only one able to come after him and catch him after his escape, and if he dies, there will be nothing to stop Loki anymore.

Loki could just let him die, look away and let the beast kill him. It should be easy, for he has no obligations to Thor, not anymore, and he should not care about his fate. All they ever had is gone now, the word brother only a memory of a life they once had, and Loki could let it all go. Thor has no love for him anymore, he has finally learned that there is no going back, and Loki should do the same. He should turn and walk away without ever looking back again.

Just one little spell, and then it all would be over. He could finally be free.

Loki looks at Thor_ (brother)_, picks up a weapon from the ground and starts to run.

Blood pounds in his ears as he tries to reach Thor, tries to save him before it is too late. He cannot lose Thor like this, cannot watch him die without doing anything. He has to save Thor. He has to.

_Hold on, Thor_, he thinks as he runs as fast as he can, _don't let go_. _Don't you dare let go._

Thor is on the ground, a dazed look in his eyes and streaks of blood on his face as the monster looms over him, ready to slay him where he lies. Loki reaches them, a blade in his hand, long and sharp, and with one powerful thrust he stabs it through the back of the beast.

It stills, turning to look at him, and Loki has no time to react before it grabs him by his shoulders. He is pulled forward, and then the blade protruding from the beast's chest goes right through him.

"NOOO!" Thor roars, loud and horrified and so pained. Just like when Loki let go.

Loki is thrown to the ground, and excruciating pain consumes him, so strong that he cannot think of anything else. He is left gasping for air, and his shaking hands come up to cover the gaping wound on his stomach. The blade went completely through him, and he can feel the ripped skin and muscles under his hands, and blood floods through his fingers and paints them red. He tries to stop it, to force his insides back together with his seidr, trying to think of healing spells, but it is no use, his blood just keeps pouring out. He knows immediately that the wound is fatal.

The creature takes a step towards him, intending to finish what it started. "See you in Hel, monster", Loki snarls and swallows the blood that threatens to come up his throat.

The Kursed looks down too late to see the grenade, and then it is caught by the vortex, roaring in anger and pain as it is ripped apart until there is nothing left. Loki tries to remember how to breathe.

Thor is suddenly by his side, lifting him up and wrapping his arms around him tightly. Blood is dripping from an open gash on his forehead, but he looks otherwise unharmed. So Loki succeeded.

He is glad of that. Thor's life is worth much more than his.

"No, no, no", Thor mutters in desperation, his eyes flickering frantically to where Loki's armour is wet with the blood seeping through. He presses his hand to Loki's stomach as gently as possible, but it still hurts and Loki hisses in pain. Thor withdraws his hand as if it burns, and his face crumples. He looks like a small child.

"Oh, you fool, you didn't listen", he whispers, and he sounds like he could cry.

"I know", Loki says, shaking his head. Coldness spreads through his body, and it hurts, hurts so much. "I'm a fool, I'm a fool."

Thor cradles him as if he were a child, trying desperately to think of something that could help, something that could save Loki. "Stay with me, okay?" he pleads and his voice breaks. He cups Loki's face gently, his hands warm and shaking. He feels so right, and Loki cannot stop himself from leaning onto his touch. The coldness is pushed away for a moment, and Loki fights the urge to close his eyes and just sleep.

"I'm sorry", he chokes out, and he is not lying, he has lied enough. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

He is so sorry for all he has done, sorry for destroying everything, and he looks at Thor's eyes when he repeats the words over and over again because he wants Thor to know that, wants him to know that Loki never wanted any of this to happen. He wants Thor to forgive him.

"Shh, it's okay", Thor tries to reassure him, but it does not help, nothing helps.

His face is contorted with anguish as he watches Loki die a second time. He has lost him once already and now again, and this time there will be no way to get back, no way to escape death. He will die, and Thor is unable to do anything about it. There is nothing he can do to save him.

Loki cannot feel anything anymore, not even pain, only numbness, and he is grateful for that. It will be much easier if it does not hurt. He can pretend that he is only falling asleep.

His breaths are coming out in harsh pants, and he lets his hands fall from his stomach to his sides, the dark ground under him even darker with his blood, almost black. There is no use in fighting anymore, for he cannot win.

Thor is blinking back tears, trying to push away the familiar grief that threatens to consume him, and Loki feels strangely comforted knowing that there will be someone to truly mourn him. He did not think that Thor would care anymore.

"It's alright", Thor tells him, but no, it is not, and he knows it too. "I'll tell Father what you did here today."

Loki meets Thor's eyes. "I didn't do it for him", he whispers.

_I did it for you, for Mother. For all of us._

He does not say that, but he hopes that Thor knows. He must know.

Tears are now streaming down his cheeks and dropping to the dirty ground one by one, leaving their paths on his skin. He cannot stop them from falling.

Thor holds him tightly as if trying to prevent death from taking Loki, trying to keep him safe in his arms and never let go. He looks so vulnerable and so lost, sorrow in his eyes, and Loki wants to reach out and touch him and comfort him, to say that he will be fine, everything will be fine. Everything but Loki himself.

He does not know what will happen when he dies or where he will go. He does not know anything, even though he has been close to death more than once, the countless scars of the careless quests of their youth reminding him of that, but it always let him escape, it did not want him. Until now.

Loki is afraid. He does not want to die.

_I am so sorry, Thor,_ he wants to say again, one more time, but the words get stuck in his throat and he cannot force them out, cannot tell Thor the truth, cannot even say goodbye._ I am sorry for everything._

_I love you, brother._

He closes his eyes and dies.


	2. the beginning

**2. the beginning**

Loki wakes up with a choked gasp.

There is something soft under him as if he is lying on some kind of a bed, and light shines on his eyelids, bright and warm. He can feel the gentle wind brushing his skin, like a summer breeze, and he hears soft humming near him, a sweet melody barely louder than a whisper. It reminds him of the songs his mother used to sing to him when he was a child.

He does not open his eyes, only clenches them tightly shut. He knows it is not real, for it cannot be. This is only a figment of his imagination, a false dream, nothing more than that, but even though he knows it, he does not want to open his eyes and shatter the image he has painted. He does not want to see the reality. It is easier to just lie there and pretend.

He does not know where he is and he does not even want to know, because it does not matter where he goes. Nothing matters anymore. He is dead, that is all he knows, for his heart is silent in his chest as if it never even beat at all. There is no familiar sound of its constant beating, no blood rushing through his veins. Only deep silence and a feeling of terrible emptiness.

Yes, he is dead, and this time for good. This is a fate he cannot escape now, not even with all his talents. He is a liar and a cheater, a trickster, but he is knows that there is nothing he can do to cheat death. Death is final and inevitable, a force that has always been and always will be, and Loki is no match for it. It is time for him to accept his fate.

His head is spinning and his thoughts are a blurred mess, filled with images of his demise, of his final downfall. He can still feel the blood staining his hands, smell the scent of copper in the air, hear Thor's broken sobs as he held his dying brother. He remembers the words he spoke, how they fell past his lips and revealed all he had once tried to hide, _I'm sorry, I'm so sorry-_

Loki does not want to think of it anymore. It is all gone now.

He was killed by a blade thrust through him, killed because he could not turn away and let Thor die. He was supposed to turn away, but he did not, and so he offered his life for Thor's, died so that his brother could live. It was a sacrifice he did not know was needed, but he supposes that he should have known better than to think that it would be so easy, for everything has a price. But even though he paid for it, he does not regret saving Thor. It was a hard price, but one he was willing to pay.

Not a long time ago he was constantly trying to harm Thor, to even kill him, and he once succeeded in that when he sent the Destroyer to Midgard to prevent Thor from returning. Loki can still remember how Thor pleaded for the lives of those mortals and offered his own life instead, how he apologised for all he had ever done to wrong him. Loki sat on the high seat of Hlidskjalf with Gungnir in his hand and listened to Thor, and then he killed him. He struck Thor, and his once-brother's mortal form fell to the ground and died.

Fratricide, people call it, killing one's brother. The Aesir deem killing one's family the worst crime there is, for family is sacred and has to be preserved and protected. Killing one's blood and flesh is an act of unspeakable ruthlessness and evil, and kinslayers are forever cursed and scorned, no better than the dirt beneath their feet. Loki remembers how Odin once sentenced a man to death for killing his daughter, and though the man pleaded and cried and screamed, his pleas fell to deaf ears. The people spit on him as he was dragged to be executed, and when his head was cut off his body and his blood fell to the marble stones and stained them, bright red against pure white, they all cheered.

There are so many words for killing someone. Homicide, patricide, matricide, fratricide, sororicide, filicide, words for taking a life and watching it bleed away until there is nothing left. Who has the right to decide who lives or not, Loki once wondered when he was but a child, hopelessly naive and ignorant, but he has grown wiser since and understood that world is not black and white, it is filled with shades of grey and that there is no such thing as pure goodness. Everyone can be a monster.

The Aesir are warriors and thus killers, that is in their nature, swords swinging and blood flowing, painting the world red, but Loki is worse than any of them. They kill, but he destroys, he is a kingslayer, a kinslayer, and he supposes that it is a wonder he managed to hide his monstrosity for so long, albeit living under his false appearance did him little good in the end. His true nature has always been lurking beneath his skin, itching and crawling, biding for its time, and Loki could do nothing to stop it from surfacing.

But Loki did not mean to kill Thor. He really did not, for he loved Thor and not even the revelation of his origins had managed to remove that love, but he was blinded by his rage, he was so _angry_. He wanted to hurt Thor, wanted to make him feel what he had felt for years and years, and he did not think of the consequences at all. He did not think of how fragile Thor was without his godhood, and Thor died right before his eyes, died because Loki let his anger take control of him.

Thor lay there with his eyes closed and blood marring his face, his heart slowing down and then ceasing to beat, and Loki could only watch as he faded away. It was supposed to be like this, Thor was not supposed to get hurt. No, Thor was always so bright and perfect and immortal, untouchable, undefeatable, a _god_. He was not supposed to die.

It felt as if everything had stopped then, and Loki could not think as he watched the body lying on the ground, could not even breathe. Thor was dead, and he did not want it, it was his fault. For years Loki had resented Thor for the way he treated him and mocked him, and he had wished for someone to teach him a lesson or two, but despite that he had never actually wanted his brother to get hurt.

But still he just kept hurting Thor again and again, tried to crush him, to break him. He could not stop, he thought he had to do that, he thought he knew why. But in the end none of it mattered anymore, for nothing could make him hate Thor more than he loved him.

The sound of Thor crying out in grief, the sound of a broken heart, is the last thing he remembers. He did love him still despite all Loki did, and it makes his heart ache, makes him feels emotions he thought he had buried a long time ago. That is what Thor has always done, he loves with all his heart and loves even when he should not, his love is like a burning flame, and Loki knows that it would have been easier to die if Thor had hated him. He would not feel such longing and grief now.

Loki hopes that Thor will not mourn for him for long. It is better if he finally lets him go and stops chasing shadows he has no hope of catching. Thor has to go on with his life, he cannot grieve over the brother he lost, not again. He must leave Loki behind, and this time for good. It will be better that way.

Despite that Loki wishes that he could see Thor again for one last time, touch him and memorise every detail of his face, his golden hair and eyes like stars, and say that he is so sorry. He said it already so many times, whispering the words until he cried, but he wants to say it again, wants to beg for Thor's forgiveness and make him understand. If he got his redemption, maybe he would finally know peace now.

He hopes that Thor knows why he saved him and died for him. It was an act of desperation, an apology, an attempt to make things right again, but most of all, he did it out of love. He loves Thor, loves him too much even though he should know better, and he wishes he had said that before it was too late.

Loki tastes salt and realises that he is crying again. He did not know he had any tears left.

Suddenly, without a warning, there is a hand on his cheek, fingers trailing gently on his skin, soft and comforting. Loki stills.

"It's alright, darling", he hears someone say, and the voice brings so many memories to his mind, so much grief. Loki's breath catches in his throat because it cannot be, it is not possible.

He opens his eyes at last, and a cry escapes his mouth.

Frigga is sitting next to him in a chair and looking at him with a small smile on her lips. Bright light illuminates her face, and she is just as beautiful as she has always been, her appearance unchanged, her blue eyes clear. They are the exact same colour of Thor's eyes, the colour of the sky and the sea. Her hair is loose and falling over her shoulders in gentle curls, the wind twirling strands of it in the air as she watches him. She smiles at him as if nothing is wrong, and Loki cannot think, cannot do anything, cannot understand how. She is dead, she died, she was _murdered_-

"Mama", he manages to choke out, his voice breaking and his eyes widening in disbelief. He has not called her that since he was a child.

For a moment he can only stare at her, his limbs and mind frozen, but then he surges forward, unable to control himself, thinking of nothing else than her. He wraps his arms around her neck and holds her tightly, never ever letting go again. He has to touch her, has to make sure she is really there, that she is not just a cruel dream.

He buries his face in her neck, tears streaming down his cheeks, and he can sense her scent, like sunlight and roses and home. Her hands are tangled in his hair as he kneels on the ground and holds her, and Loki cannot stop crying because she is there, she is alive, she is real.

"Shh, my child, don't cry", his mother says quietly. "I'm here, you are safe. I'm here."

Loki's whole body is shaking as he embraces her, and he cannot seem to let go. He tries to say something, anything, but he cannot, the words get stuck in his throat. He can only hold her and cry, tears of grief and relief and something else he cannot name.

Frigga strokes his head gently and continues to hum, her voice quiet and comforting. Loki recognises the lullaby she used to sing to him when he was a child, a song of seidr and stars and love. It only makes him cry more.

He has missed her so much that he cannot even describe how it felt to lose her. She is his mother, and he loves her more than anything, has always loved, and blood means nothing anymore. Though he tried to push her away, he never could. He could not stop loving her, and oh, how much he grieved when a guard came to his cell and told him that she was dead, killed by the hands of an enemy, forever gone. He had never felt anything so terrible.

"I'm sorry", Loki sobs. "I'm so sorry, so sorry."

He cannot stop apologising, cannot stop saying how sorry he is, he repeats the words over and over again just like he did with Thor. She died, and it was his fault, he told the beast where to go and she died, and he hates himself for it. It was his fault, all of it, and he can never forgive himself.

"I caused all of this", he says, his hoarse voice muffled by the tears that keep falling and falling. "I never meant this to happen, I'm sorry, please forgive me, Mother. Please."

It is not only her death that he speaks of, he means everything he has done to her, everything he has ruined. He has hurt her in so many ways, the only person who ever loved him unconditionally, and he regrets it more than anything.

Frigga presses her lips to his neck, her touch light and comforting. "It's alright, Loki", she says again. "Everything will be alright."

Loki wants to believe her, but he does not dare, not after all of this.

"Mama", he repeats, his voice a whisper, unable to say anything else. He hopes more than anything that this is not a dream. He does not think he could survive that.

Frigga stays quiet and keeps humming, and Loki slides down to put his head on her lap. She cradles him in her arms, and Loki feels as if he were a child again, reminded of those golden days of his past. His mother radiates warmth, a trait both she and Thor have always possessed as if they had been blessed by the sun. Loki closes his eyes and does not let go of her.

_Why did you have to die_, he wants to ask her._ You promised that you would always be with me. Why did you have to leave me?_

Loki would have sacrificed his life for hers without a second thought, would have burned all the realms if it meant that he could save her. Loki is selfish, he knows that. He would have done anything to keep her with him, but he never had the chance. She died alone, and Loki could not do anything about it.

He does not know how long they sit there, a mother and a son, like they used to do so many times before. It feels like an eternity, time has stopped for them, and gradually Loki's tears froze on his cheeks and he can breathe again, daring to hope that this is real, that he is not imagining it. She is truly there, and Loki wants this moment to never end.

"Can you ever forgive me?" Loki asks when he finds his words again, pleading. He wants that more than anything else, but at the same time he knows that he does not deserve it.

Frigga smiles softly. "There is nothing to forgive, my son."

_A lie_, a voice hisses in his head, _she lies_, _you are a monster, a destroyer, and it is your fault that she is dead. All your life you were nothing more than a burden to her, taken in only because she pitied you, a cuckoo in the nest. If she ever even loved you at all, those days are long gone now._

Loki tells his poisonous thoughts to shut up, but he cannot help the seed of doubt forming in his heart and consuming it.

Frigga used to visit him in the dungeons even though Odin had forbidden her from seeing him. She was the only person to do so, the only person to still care about him, and at the same Loki resented and yearned for her visits. He told himself that he had no mother anymore, but it was hard to convince himself of that when she would come to him and hold him despite his protests, tell him that he was still her little boy and that she would never stop loving him.

She told him that he could still turn around, that it was not too late to make amends. If he just let his family to help him, everything would be fine again. Odin would forgive him, she said, if he showed remorse for his actions. Loki laughed at her face.

Loki tried to push her away, to take her unneeded love and throw it back to her face so that she would finally learn not to bother loving the monster hiding under her son's skin, but apparently it did not work. She still has love for him left, and Loki does not know why.

"How can you say that?" he whispers. He does not understand why she does not hate him after all he has done. "I destroyed everything. _I killed you_."

"No, Loki", she says and shakes her head. "Don't blame yourself for what happened to me. I was well aware of the risk and I still stayed, and there is nothing you could have done to save me, for it was my time to go."

"I have seen much in my life. My prophecies were a wondrous gift, but they were also a curse", she continues. "I have always known how I would die, and I knew I could not change it. I accepted my fate long ago, for I have lived a long life and experienced much happiness. I did not fear death."

Loki does not know what to say to that so he stays silent. He tries to understand, but he cannot.

Frigga lifts his chin and looks at him in the eye. She is radiating like the sun, bright and beautiful, so _alive,_ as if she never even went away. "Everything that has happened doesn't matter anymore", she says firmly. "Not what you did, not what we did. None of it matters, for all is in the past now, Loki, and beyond our reach. Don't yearn for what you cannot have back. It is better that way."

She leans down to press a small kiss on his forehead again, a light brush of her lips, and it feels so right. Loki missed her more than he even imagined, every moment without her hurt like an open wound, but now she is here and perhaps he can finally heal. He wishes he could.

"I know it is hard, I do", she says gently. "But you have to let go."

_I don't know how_, Loki thinks.

"I'm afraid", is all he says. Frigga holds him tighter.

He does not even know what he is afraid of. There is nothing to fear anymore, for he is dead and will always be, nothing can hurt him anymore, but he is still afraid. Maybe of what awaits him, maybe of losing himself, he does not know.

"Don't be", she says. "I'm here with you, and I will never go away."

It sounds like a promise, said with iron and fire in her voice, and Loki allows himself to believe her. He does not know what else to do.

"Oh, my child, how I wish you weren't here", Frigga sighs so quietly that Loki barely hears her. "You were meant for life, for great things, but death claimed you too early."

Loki knows that, but he would not change what he did. He does not regret dying for his brother. "I had to do that", he tells her. "I had to save Thor."

He wants her to understand that all he did today, he did for Thor and her. His family.

"I know", Frigga answers, and there is deep sadness in her voice that she cannot hide.

The death of one of her sons was the price for saving the other, a heavy price, and she has always known that it would be so. She wishes that the Norns were not so cruel.

"I thought I could try to make things right again", Loki whispers after a moment, more to himself than to her.

He had the chance to walk away and end it all, to be finally free, but he did not take it. He should have, but he thought that if he saved Thor, if he showed that he regretted, if he just proved that he still loved him, everything would be somehow alright again, that they could go back to what once was.

It was a stupid thought, he knows now, ridiculously idealistic, a fool's dream, and it could never come true. He reached too far, not understanding that he could not simply wipe out the past and start again, and falling was only a matter of time. Thor mourns for him now, but if he had not died, nothing would have changed. Thor would have shackled him as soon as possible and left him to rot in his cell for the rest of eternity.

All this time he told himself that it was too late, but he still maintained a small flicker of hope that somehow he could just stop and turn around. He knew he should not hope, because hope only hurts, but he did not want any of it anymore. He did not want a throne, did not want chaos or destruction. He just wanted it all to end.

Loki is tired of everything. He does not have the strength to fight anymore, the strength to hate. His hatred burned once brightly, like a blazing inferno destroying everything in its path, and he thought it was all he needed, that it would help. But he has little of it left, and now he is just tired.

He supposes that he should be grateful that he is dead. Now he is free of his burdens, free of his torments. There is nothing left for him anymore but an eternal life in the realm of the dead.

Being warriors, the Aesir sing glorious tales of those who are brave enough to offer their life in battle, to give up the days ahead of them so that others can live. The Valkyries come for them as their last breath passes over their lips, and they get carried to Valhalla, to the the hall of the fallen gods. There is no pain there, they say, no sorrow, only joy and laughter and happiness. Loki hopes that he can finally find peace.

When he was younger, Loki never really believed that there would be anything after death. How could there be when death is so final, so consuming? But when he grew up and fought his first real battle, he saw people die all around him, saw them laugh in exhilaration and battle lust before they fell suddenly to the ground like flies, their expression turning to one of horror. They lay there, their eyes closed, looking like they could be sleeping if not for the blood covering them, and Loki never forgot that sight.

After that he started to believe that there had to be something beyond the realms of the living, because it was the only way he could stand the thought of dying someday. He did not want to be afraid.

Frigga's fingers are playing absently with his hair, the strands too long, reaching his shoulders, and Loki remembers the long fights they used to have when Loki refused to cut his hair as a child. He liked it long, but she insisted that as a prince he could not look like a shabby street boy. She wanted to cut it much shorter, but Loki was stubborn and evaded her attempts until Thor and his friends mocked him for looking like a girl. Loki did not let his hair grow for years after that.

It is funny that apparently not even being dead makes him forget, even though he wants to bury all his memories and never see them again. But no, he remembers everything as clearly as it had happened yesterday, he can see the millions of different colours on the Bifrost and the golden gleam of the towers in sunlight, smell the flowers in Frigga's garden, hear the clanking of swords and the grunts of the warriors as they sparred. He remembers the citizens of Asgard, Sif and the Warriors Three, Odin with his one eye and all-seeing wisdom, Thor with his thunderstorms and bright smiles, Frigga with her tapestries and unconditional love. He remembers all of it.

He knows it would be easier if he could leave them behind. They all are lost to him, the man he once called father, the brother he thought he did not have anymore, all but his mother. She is here now, and Loki realises that even though he has nothing else left, he will have her with him for all eternity. It fills his heart with joy he has not felt for a long time.

It will be just them two in their own little world, the lives they once had completely meaningless. Death took them and will not give them back, but they do not need them. They are now where they belong, their purpose in the universe fulfilled. There is nothing Loki has to do, he cannot be used anymore. Everyone is a pawn of life, their fates decided for them from the beginning, and there is nothing stronger than fate. Many have tried, but none have managed to escape it, it always finds them. But it has no power over them anymore for they are in death's keeping, and she guards closely those she has in her grasp.

Death made them free, an exchange for what she took from them, and now they are safe from the dangers of those who are living, from broken hearts and shattered dreams, and nothing can touch them. There is no one to take his mother away from him anymore.

They sit there in silence, holding hands and neither of them is saying anything because they do not have to, they do not need words. It is enough for them to just hold each other and shut everything else outside.

It is still hard for Loki to believe that this is truly real, because he thought that he would never get to Valhalla. He feels as if he were in a dream that cannot be true, for it is too sweet, too happy, and Loki has done nothing to deserve this. He is far from honourable, his hands are painted with red, and he was sure that he once he died, he would descend to Hela's kingdom to join the other traitors and killers and those who are fallen from grace. It would have been what he deserved, and he never thought that he would rise to the stars.

Time passes, seconds and minutes and hours, but Loki feels none of it. He can only concentrate on his mother next to him, and even his death means nothing to him right now. She is here with him now, and she will never go away.

The air has become a bit colder, and the night is starting to fall around them. Loki lifts his head from his mother's lap and looks around for the first time, his gaze roaming across his surroundings. He realises that he knows this place.

They are in Frigga's garden. Loki recognises it because it looks exactly the same it has always been, almost as if it were truly here. As a child it was his favourite place to go when he wanted to be alone, and he used to climb to the big apple tree in the centre of the garden and sit on a branch high above the ground, reading whatever book sparked his interest then. He liked how quiet and peaceful it was, the only sounds were the rustling of the leaves as the wind blew through them and the faint chirping of the birds. There was no one to bother him, for none but the royal family were allowed access to the queen's garden, and Loki could spend hours like that, lost in his own world, until someone, usually Frigga, came to get him down.

There is grass under him, and he runs his fingers through it, feeling how soft it is. Everywhere he looks, he sees flowers, red and blue and white, so many different colours, all thriving and beautiful and perfect. The wind carries their scent as it gently brushes their pedals, and it smells like earth and Frigga. It makes Loki feel as if he were home.

The apple tree looms over where they sit, its branches reaching high up to the sky, and the sun shines through the leaves as it sets, painting golden shadows on their faces. There are no clouds, and the clear sky is streaked with red and orange as the sun prepares to let the moon to take its place in the sky.

Loki thinks of Thor then. He loved sunsets, and when they were children, they used to run to the Bifrost just as the sun was coming down, the bridge glittering with all the colours of the rainbow. They sat on the edge, their feet dangling above the crashing waves of the sea, and from there they saw all of Asgard becoming covered in the last rays of sunlight. They watched as the sun slowly set and set, and that last moment before it went away, the final burst of light, was a moment of pure beauty to them.

Thinking of Thor hurts, it really hurts. Loki tries not to let his thoughts wander, but it is impossible. Everything there reminds him of his family and home, memories of those happy days filling with mind, and he can do nothing to stop them.

He wishes he knew what is happening in the realms. Malekith is still there with the Aether, and the convergence is nearing. Soon the realms will be aligned, and Loki hopes that Thor will find enough strength to defeat the Dark Elf and restore the balance before the darkness that once was returns again. If not, Thor will join them soon. Loki feels guilty for finding that thought appealing.

It is beautiful there in the garden, Loki thinks, and it could be almost easy to forget that he is truly dead. He wonders whether he could just stay there with his mother and never leave, and then he realises that he truly can do that. It is just the two of them there, no one else, no one to tell him what to do. He can be with her for all eternity.

Frigga has not removed her arms around him, and Loki sits on the grass and leans closer. He feels safe in her embrace.

"What is death like?" he dares to ask after hesitating for a while, not sure if he really wants to know the answer.

"It is peaceful", Frigga tells him. "Time has no rule here, there are no days or years or centuries. Nothing ever changes for us, and it does not have to. We are only souls now, small parts of who we once were, and what is dead may never die. Here we will stay for all eternity until Ragnarök comes and calls for us to fight again. But it will not happen for a long time, my son, and until then we can be in peace."

Loki frowns because he does not quite understand. "But where will be go?"

"Nowhere, for there is no place to go. We are here and there and nowhere at all", she says and gestures at the garden around them. "We are free now. Death is what we make it to be."

Then she sighs quietly, a small sound of sadness, just a flicker, and then she covers it with a smile. "It's not like life, Loki, but I don't miss living, not anymore. I learned to leave life behind, and I am as happy here as I could be."

"Do you truly think so?" Loki asks. "Could I be happy too?

He doubts that, but he cannot help wanting it all the same. He does not remember what being happy even feels like.

Frigga takes his hand and holds it, intertwining their fingers. "I know you can."

She sounds as she believes in him, and Loki clutches her hand tightly in return and looks her in the eye. "I love you, Mother", he says quietly. It is the truth, it is as simple as that, and he feels no longer vulnerable, it no longer hurts. She is here, he is here, everything is fine.

"Oh, my child, my Loki", she says and lets out a gentle laugh, the corners of her mouth turning up. "You were always so precious, my little treasure, and I loved you from the first moment I had you in my hands. It didn't matter that you weren't my blood, you were a child of my heart, and I have always loved you."

"Even though I have found my peace here, I missed you and Thor every single day", she continues. "The most terrible thing that can happen to a mother is to be separated from her children. There is nothing more important to me than you, has never been. Losing you hurt more than dying, but I am grateful that I could watch you from here. I didn't have to be alone."

She smiles, but she sounds sad, and Loki wants to make it go away. "I will never leave you", he says, and it is a promise, one that he is not ever going to break.

For the first time in so many years, Loki thinks that there could still be hope for him. This is his chance to forget everything, to let go and start over, and he knows he should take it. He has no reason to hold on to his anger and hatred anymore. What has happened cannot be changed, and he should not dwell in the past. He is here now, in death's embrace, and it will take care of him. There will only be an eternity of peace left for him, if he lets himself take it.

"We will be fine, Loki", Frigga assures, looking at him in the eye. "You just have to believe."

Loki nods and smiles, a bit hesitant at first, but then it blooms into a full smile, bright and sincere, devoid of any pretence. It has been such a long time since he last smiled, really smiled, because all joy abandoned him when he fell and he did not get it back. He forgot how good it felt.

They sit in silence and watch as the sun sets, almost reaching the horizon now. Loki did not notice it before, but there is water near them, perhaps even the sea. He smells salt and hears the waves crashing to the sand, coming and then going as if they want to leave the water but cannot. It is a constant sound, comforting, and Loki knows that Frigga grew up near the sea. She told him and Thor stories of how she had her own little boat and used to take it to the sea where she could be all alone, and if she imagined hard enough, she could pretend to be one with the water.

The sun disappears, and the red sky is the only sign that it was even there. Loki watches it go and thinks that it is the end. The end of the day, the end of his life, the end of everything he once knew. As it moves away to let the night begin its rule, Loki lets go of his past and does not look back.

"Look", Frigga whispers into his ear. She points at the darkening sky, and Loki follows her gaze, looking at the stars that are already shining, bright but so far away, the swirling nebulae and unknown galaxies. They are always there, never changing, just hidden by the day. But when the night falls, they appear again. Loki has always loved stars.

"Even death can be beautiful", she says. "It is not an end, it is a beginning. Just a journey to a new world we don't know yet, an adventure, but once we get there, there is no reason to fear it anymore."

It all sounds far too good to be true, and the part of Loki that is still full of bitterness and hatred wants to dismiss her words and say that they are nothing but air. But he silences the voice whispering in his head, hearing the wisdom in her words, and he understands. He laughs then, the sound carried away by the wind twirling strands of his hair, a cool breath caressing his skin. He is free now, and nothing can take it away from him anymore.

Suddenly Loki straightens and furrows his brows, his gaze moving around the garden, searching. He does not see anything, but there is something there, he feels it in his mind, a pressure, something that is trying to get in. It was not there just a moment ago, but he can sense it circling them, moving closer and closer as if trying to find a way in. He does not quite know what it is, for it is nothing he has ever felt before, but it is strong, like a pull, a shadow, something wrong, something twisted. It does not belong here.

"Mother", he says quietly, wary of this sudden change in the atmosphere, and she turns to look at him. As soon as she does, she lets out a gasp and her eyes widen, a sign that she feels it too. Loki is abruptly cold.

"No", Frigga whispers, fear clouding her voice. She grabs his sleeve tightly, and her knuckles are turning white.

She is looking at his hand, and Loki follows her gaze, confused. He recoils in horror and twists away from her.

He can see right through his hand as if it were not there. He still feels it, the bones, the joints, the skin, but when he tries to touch it with his other hand, his fingers meet only air where there should be skin and flesh. Loki does not understand.

"What is happening to me?" he asks, and his voice rises in panic that he cannot control, his chest heaving and his breath quickening. Something is terribly wrong with him.

Then he lurches forward, feeling as if something is invading his mind with force, breaking through his skull and ripping it wide open, prodding and stabbing and making him bleed. He lifts his hands to cover his ears, trying to shut it out, but nothing helps, it is already there and it refuses to go away. It pulls and twists and gnaws, and Loki thinks he could scream.

Frigga seizes his shoulders and shakes him, her face frantic, her eyes filled with fear. "Loki, listen to me. You have to listen to me", she demands, trying to make him look at her. "Push it out, don't listen to it, don't let it in. Whatever you do, do not let it in!"

Loki tries to listen to her, but it feels as if she is far away, as if she is not there anymore, or perhaps he is the one who is not there. His face contorts in pain and he grits his teeth as he tries to force the shadow in his mind out, clenching his eyes shut. Garbled words and hisses fill his mind, and he cannot grasp any of them. He can hear it laughing at him.

"Go away!" he shouts, shaking his head. "Leave me alone!"

Frigga is murmuring something to herself, words of seidr as she tries to help, and she is kneeling beside him with her hands wrapped tightly around his neck, doing her best to hold him still.

Loki is cold as if he were surrounded by a winter storm, shards of ice piercing his skin and the wind howling around him like the wails of the lost souls, ugly and terrible. He should not be cold, not here.

"Look at me!" Frigga says, no, begs. Loki's eyes snap open, and he sees the terrified expression on her face. "Loki, you have to fight it!"

Loki tries, but it is hard. He does not know what is happening, what the shadow is, but he still feels it in his mind, and it is too strong for him. He cannot fight it.

He looks down, his body shaking, and realises that he cannot see his arms anymore. Something is wrong with him, and it has spread further from his hands, and as Loki keeps looking he sees his himself slowly fading away, his skin and flesh disappearing, as if he were just an illusion, as if he were not real anymore.

He reaches out and tries to touch Frigga, to beg her to make it go away, thinking that if he just manages to touch her, everything will be fine, she will make it fine. But when he grasps her hand, he feels nothing. Loki is afraid now.

"No", he gasps, breaking. Frigga is looking at him in despair, trying to find a way to help, to fix this. Loki does not feel her hands around his neck anymore.

The shadow moves in his mind, tightening its hold, and Loki does not know how long before it consumes him. "Don't let it take me", he cries out, begging. "Don't let me go!"

"I won't!" Frigga promises, her voice shaking, but before she can say anything else, Loki lets out a scream.

It hurts, oh it hurts so much, his mind feeling as if it were shattering into pieces. He is fading away, becoming nothing, and he screams again, his voice echoing around the garden that is not beautiful anymore. He sees rotten roses, their pedals dripping with blood, trees full of dead leaves swaying in the wind, and the ground opens up, a deep abyss appearing, dark and bottomless, and it smiles at him, its sharp teeth showing.

Loki is being pulled away, wrenched from his mother's grasp, and he tries to fight it, to do anything, but the shadow has no mercy for him. It yanks him, one strong tug, and the last thing Loki sees is his mother, her face streaked with tears and her hand reached out, trying to save him.

Loki tries to take her hand, her name on his lips, a whisper, a last prayer, but then he is swallowed by the darkness and everything fades away.

* * *

Loki wakes up a second time.

He knows immediately that he is not in Valhalla anymore, for he cannot feel the soft grass against his skin anymore, cannot smell the flowers, cannot hear the wind rustling through the leaves. He cannot feel his mother.

She is not there. There is only silence around him, and Loki wants to scream and shout and cry, to let out the rage that is now storming inside him, but he cannot, no sound comes out of mouth and his eyes stay dry. There are no tears left for him to cry. He has truly used all of them now.

Loki just got her back, he could see her and touch her and talk to her after he had thought that he would never be with her again, and everything was fine, he was fine, he was not afraid anymore. He had no reason to be, for she was there and she was real, and Loki could try to make things right again. He allowed himself to finally let go of everything he had harboured in the past, and it felt so good, he was so relieved. What a wondrous feeling it was to be free again.

But of course it did not last. He was promised an eternal life with her in peace, and he believed that it would be so, but it was only a lie, a trick for a trickster. She was taken from him again, and now she is forever lost to him.

How cruel it was to let him see her when he had lost all hope of ever meeting her again, to make him believe that he would really be with her forever. He thought he had got a new beginning, thought that he was at last forgiven, that death had given him a chance to start over with his mother by his side, guiding and guarding him, keeping him safe.

But no, it was not real, it was just a glimpse of a dream he could never reach. He should have realised that it would not last, for monsters do not deserve happy endings. Now he will never ever see her or Thor again.

Loki is alone. It seems like that it is all he will ever be.

Will she mourn for him, the son she has lost again? Or will she do anything to try to search for him, will she burn the realms down for him? Loki does not know. He can only think of her tear-stricken face when she could not stop him from being taken, the pain and sorrow in her eyes. If he could have just managed to grasp her hand, maybe she could have saved him, maybe he could have stayed.

Once again he caused grief for the family he had left, and once again he did not mean it. But apparently it is what he does, he takes their love and spits it back to their faces. He wishes he did not have to do that over and over again, hurt them and hurt himself, a vicious cycle that he cannot stop.

Lying on the hard ground, he covers his face with his hands, his body trembling as he gasps for air. He wishes he could feel something, even pain or grief or anything, but all he has now is numbness consuming his every cell, swallowing him whole. Loki does not know what to do now. He wonders if he could just sleep and never wake up again. It would be so much easier if he could do that.

But he knows that he cannot. He cannot wallow in his self-pity any longer, so he gets up after a while. But he does it slowly for he just does not care anymore, not after this. Why should he? He has absolutely nothing left anymore. Everything he has ever known is lost to him now. He gives up and accepts his defeat, accepts that it is all truly over now.

He glances around him to see where he is, and then he lets out a laugh that fades into a strangled sob, the sound echoing around him until it is swallowed by the darkness surrounding him. He should have known.

There is a palace near him, dark and looming, its towers high and sharp. It stands tall and proud, and Loki feels his unease prickling his skin because it makes him think of his home, the golden palace of Asgard where he grew up. But when he looks closer, he sees that it is not quite the same, it is still different, sharper and colder and darker, surrounded by something old and powerful. Loki cannot help but think that it is a mockery.

Even from this distance Loki can see that the walls are decorated with carvings of people with their mouths open in silent screams and their eyes wide in horror, their limbs spread out in grotesque positions, men and women and even children. When Loki looks at them, he thinks he sees one of them move. He turns his eyes away.

The palace is surrounded by a wall, thick and high, and in the centre of it, right before Loki, is a gate as black as the night, made of iron and blood and seidr, impossible to break. It is shut tightly to keep the living out and the dead inside, the border between life and death, day and night. Two wolves are standing in front of the gate, guarding, and they are enormous, the size of a horse, their red eyes glinting in the dark.

Loki can feel the power radiating from the palace, a low hum of ancient seidr, unlike anything he has ever felt, so powerful that his own seidr awakens inside him. It writhes in his veins as it responds to the unfamiliar power, disquieted, and then it surrounds him, shielding him as if sensing a danger. His instincts have never been wrong.

Helheim, Loki thinks as he casts his eyes to the palace. Hela's kingdom of eternal night.

He is glad that he does not have any hope left to lose anymore, for no tricks or schemes can save him from this fate.

Loki has read and heard many of things about the realm of dead, wanting to know more about the universe, but the Aesir never wanted anything to do with it. If they had to speak about the land of Hela, they always spoke in hushed whispers as if she could hear them and take them with her if they were not careful enough, their faces worried and postures wary. Loki thought they were just being stupid and superstitious, but the Aesir have always regarded the farthest of the nine realms with uncertainty and fear. Only those who are unworthy and dishonourable dwell there, traitors and murderers and other monsters, forever shackled and caged, never able to get to know true freedom. An eternal punishment for their crimes.

Loki supposes that it is only fitting that he gets what he deserves. He should have known that it would come to this, for he has lied and betrayed and killed, done everything that is expected from a monster. This was to be his fate from the day he was born in the shattered ruins of Jötunheim, it seems, and Loki wonders if Laufey saw the evil hiding under his skin and left him to die in the snow because of that.

He looks at the palace, and though he wants nothing more than to turn back, to leave and never return, he does not do that, for he knows that it is impossible. He does not want to lie to himself anymore.

He takes a step forward and starts to walk towards the gate.

Between him and the palace is a river, wide and deep, and Loki recognises it from the stories he has heard many times. Gjöll, one of the eleven Elivagar, its dark water originating from the cold spring of Hvergelmir, from deep under the roots of Yggdrasil. He feels the power of it as the river flows slowly as if it has a mind of its own, carrying memories and hopes and dreams with it, all abandoned and forgotten. The water is icy cold, Loki feels it in the air, and it makes no sound as it moves.

There is a bridge that goes over the river, the only way to the gate, and it glitters with gold even in the darkness, a sight that feels strange here. The bridge is narrow and it looks almost fragile, decrepit with thousands and thousands of years of use, and exactly in the middle of it stands a figure that is twice Loki's size, the guardian of Gjallarbru. Loki knows that he has to cross the bridge if he wishes to enter Helheim, and he also knows that if he crosses it, he can never turn back.

As he gets closer he sees that the guardian is a giantess. She is dressed in a black cloak that covers everything but her face, and in her hands she has a gleaming sword that looks as if it could cut anything in half. Her skin is white like paper, stretched tightly over her bald skull and almost shining in the darkness, and her fingers that are wrapped around the sword's handle are unnaturally long and thin, like a spider's. She stands motionless and waits for him, and Loki cannot tell whether she is simply dead like him or one of Hela's ghastly creations.

Loki stops before her. She lowers her head slowly, her movements careful and measured, and looks at him, her face devoid of any emotion. Her eyes are huge and bottomless, almost entirely black, and it feels as if she sees right through him. Loki notices only now that she has no mouth at all.

"State your name, stranger", she demands, and Loki hears her voice inside his head. It is a quiet breath, barely audible, but it echoes around his mind and reaches into its deepest pits. She lifts her sword from the ground and presses the tip to his chest.

"I am Loki", he answers and looks her in the eye. He does not say anything else, for he is no man's son anymore, no Odinson and definitely no Laufeyson. He is Loki only, and he is alone.

"And what is your business here?" the guardian asks, showing no reaction to his name. Loki wonders idly how many poor souls she receives every day, how many lost people wander to her bridge and pass through. Does she remember them, all those liars and killers and monsters, or are they just a string of faces to her, worth nothing?

Loki cannot stop the laugh that escapes his mouth and pierces the silence, even though he knows it sounds faintly hysterical. "Well, it seems like I am dead, my lady of the bridge. One supposes that usually in a situation like this the logical thing to do would be to seek entry to the realm of the dead, don't you think?

She stays silent and regards him for a moment, her expression still not changing, and Loki waits for her decision. Then she does something that looks terribly like smiling even though she does not have the mouth for it, the skin around her jaw stretching tightly over her skull so that it looks as if it could tear any moment. It is a gruesome sight.

"Very well", she says at last, her bottomless eyes glinting in dark as if she knows something he does not.

The sword is removed from his chest then, and she steps aside, a sign that he may cross the bridge and enter the realm. Loki gives her a slight nod, and as he walks away, he feels her eyes on his back. He represses a shudder.

The wolves watch him with their red eyes when he arrives at the gate, their teeth that are almost as long as his forearm bared, and Loki prepares for a fight in case he has the need to defend himself from them. But when he gets closer, they stay where they are, on the each side of the gate, and they allow him to walk past them unharmed, although they growl in warning when Loki looks over shoulder. He does not doubt for a moment that they would rip him apart if he tried to turn back.

He stands before the gate and lifts his hand, inspecting it, but before he can even touch it, it opens slowly and reveals the kingdom of the dead, the realm everyone in the living world fears.

Loki stands there and glances at his surroundings, but what he sees is not anything particularly interesting or surprising. There is no sign of anyone else, no movement or sound, and a thick fog floats in the air, enclosing the realm in its suffocating embrace. Loki cannot see much farther than a few metres.

Such a gloomy place, Loki muses to himself humourlessly as he looks around, but he supposes that he should not have expected anything else from the realm that houses the souls that are not worthy enough to be accepted into the golden halls of Valhalla. The lowest of the scum, that they are, and Loki does not fool himself with thoughts that he is any better than them. He would not be here if he were.

He thinks of his mother before he can stop himself, of the expression on her face when he was taken away from her. He closes his eyes for a brief moment and digs his nails sharply into the palms of his hand, feeling a sharp stab of pain before it fades away. When he opens his eyes again, he sees blood glistening on his fingers, red and so bright. He does not bother to wipe it away.

The palace is not far away, and there is a narrow road paved with white stones that gleam in the dark, and Loki supposes that it leads to the palace doors. Though Loki does not feel it much, the air is cold there and crusts of ice and snow patter the path and the ground around it.

He starts to walk along the path, and as soon as he takes a step forward, the gate behind him closes as if it never even opened, burying him deep inside the realm. There is no way back anymore, and it is time that he finally accepts it.

It does not take him long to get to the outer doors of the palace, and they open for him just like the gate did. Loki walks in without hesitating, knowing where to go, for there is only one option. He looks around, half-expecting to see the death milling there, but there is no one else there and it is completely silent. He does not even hear the sounds his feet should make as he walks.

Soon he reaches Eljudnir, Hela's hall, its elaborately decorated doors tall and heavy. They are open for him as if they had known he was coming, and Loki enters. He prepares himself.

Hela is there as he knew she would be, sitting on her throne and waiting. The throne room resembles eerily Odin's hall in Asgard, and as Loki walks slowly towards her he cannot help but stare at her even though he knows better than that.

She is dressed in a long black gown that reaches the floor, pooling around the stairs leading to the throne, and her hair is the same colour, long and straight, falling over her shoulder. Half of her face is beautiful, her pale skin almost translucent against the darkness of the hall, her lips rosy and her eye a deep black. But the other half of her face is decaying, her skin an ugly mess of colours, black and red and green mashed together, and it is sunken to her skull, spots of it missing entirely and revealing the gleaming bone underneath it. Where she should have an eye is only an empty hole left, and there are nothing but a few strands of hair on the left side of her skull.

She does nothing to hide her deformation, she does not cover the left side of her face with anything, for she is not ashamed of it. No, she displays her rotting skin and empty eye socket and visible bones with pride because that is who she is, half dead and half alive, a being of both worlds. The queen of her own realm.

What surprises Loki the most is that she has the appearance of a child. Her face is round and her hands that are on her lap are small and delicate, and the right side of her face is lovely in a way a child's face is, innocent and ignorant. If he did not know any better, she would look like a harmless little girl to him.

The lady of the dead has a crown on her head, made of gold and onyx, the symbol of the power she has in this realm. The throne she sits on is lavish, decorated with gems and carvings, fit for a ruler. Loki notices only now that two servants are standing behind the throne and waiting for her commands, their heads bent down in submission. He cannot see their faces because they are covered with hoods, but he is not sure he even wants to.

Hela leans on the throne, her back straight, the posture of a queen, and she regards him with a thoughtful look in her eye as he stands before her, measuring him, determining his worth. Loki does not fidget under her scrutinising gaze, for he does not fear her even though he perhaps should. He stands still and lifts his chin.

Loki looks at her and wonders what he should make of her. She does not burn brightly as the gods of Asgard, she is more like a shadow, almost as if she were one with her dark kingdom. But he does not let it fool him, for he knows that she is an ancient being with remarkable power that is matched by only few in these worlds. She could make realms fall with hardly any effort at all, and for thousands and thousands of years she has ruled here unchallenged, and those in life's protective arms fear even the sound of her name. She is said to be as old as the universe itself, and no one knows what she truly is.

Seidr is radiating from her, strong and dark, and Loki almost longs to touch it for he has never seen anything like it, it is power in its truest form. It creates an aura around her, like a shell, caressing her face and body, and Loki recognises it. It is the same seidr that dragged him away from his mother.

"Lady Hela", Loki says and bows slightly even though he does not want to offer her anything, but he knows that she expects it from him because this is her kingdom and she is the queen. Though he does not like it, he is her subject now.

She nods and smiles slightly, easily pleased. "Little Liesmith", she acknowledges in return, looking at him from her high throne, her childish face as alight as the face of a half-dead girl can be. "I have heard many things about you. Whispers and curses from the mouths of my children, tales of your deeds, spit out with poison in their words. You have quite the reputation."

"You flatter me, my queen", Loki says, his face impassive.

Hela taps her fingers on the arm of her throne. "I have to say that I have been waiting for the chance to meet you. There are not many interesting people in my halls nowadays. One grows easily bored with such dull company."

"It is very fortunate then that I am here now", Loki states.

He knows very little of what she wants from him, but he is not a fool and he knows that it is better if he goes along with it. That is what he does best, after all, he watches and listens and waits and only then makes his move, at a moment no one usually expects it. He has little need for rushing and potentially ruining everything.

"Yes, it is", Hela says. She looks at him as if he is her new toy, as if she wants to pick him apart and see what he is made of, turn his skin inside out and see the darkness hiding beneath it. "As I knew you would be, even though I did not know when. What a heroic way it was to die, I must say, saving your dear brother from his doom when you could have just let him perish. I certainly did not expect that, but perhaps I should have known better than to think you predictable, for you are anything but that."

"Thor must be very proud of you for what you did. Shame that it wasn't enough", Hela continues, malicious mirth evident in her voice. "I imagine you thought that your last trick could surely get you to Valhalla, to your mother, and a clever little trick it was. It would have been a fine ending for Loki of Asgard; the last act of love, a sacrifice, a salvation. Do they mourn for you, I wonder, do they sing songs of you? First a traitor, then a hero."

She is mocking him, and she does it with a smile on her lips. Loki grits his teeth.

"I am no hero", he says sharply. He knows he should not let her get a rise out of him, but he cannot stand her gloating.

He is not a hero, and he has never been. He wanted to be, yes, how he wanted, but he could not, it was not for him. Thor was always the hero, the saviour, the sun that shone so brightly that it covered everything else with its shadow. Loki could not be like Thor but he had to try, for he thought that if he did, they would love him more. But it was all for nothing, for chaos and destruction are in his blood, have always been. His fate was never to be a hero.

Hela's smile widens. "No, you are not. After all, monsters cannot be heroes, can they?"

Loki almost recoils but forces himself to stand still and keep his face neutral, not giving her the satisfaction of seeing him display any weakness. He should not care what she says about him because it is the truth, and words are only air, words cannot hurt him. They are his weapon, and they cannot be turned against him.

"You would know, my lady", he says and offers her a charming smile in return, revealing his teeth, his eyes locked on hers.

He almost hopes that she would get angry, even though he should not, but she only claps her small hands together and laughs, delighted by his remark. "As sharp-tongued as I've heard, I see", she says. "I'm glad that you do not disappoint me."

Loki inclines his head but does not say anything else, waiting for Hela to finally get to the point, tired of this little show of hers. He knows she must have something to say to him, for otherwise she would not even bother seeing him, she would have just sent him to join the others in her gloomy realm. She cares little for the countless souls she has in her possession, and her interest is hard to pique. Loki does not think it is a good thing at all that she wants something from him.

Hela might look young, but she is certainly no fool, and Loki knows it. If he has to trick her, he must do it very carefully because it will undoubtedly be a hard task. She is perceptive and wise, her knowledge as old as she is, but Loki is not that worried about her, for he trusts his own abilities.

Silvertongue, the Aesir called him with scorn, the father of lies and mischief and trickery, everything they thought dishonourable and unbecoming for a son of Odin. They tried to be wary of his sharp words and easily crafted lies, but they always fell into his traps and they hated him for it. They could not do anything about it because of his status, they could only glare at him when they saw him, but they gladly spread tales of the unmanly little prince behind his back when they thought he could not hear them. Loki learned soon to ignore every word they said about him, for they were all beneath him. He did not care what they said.

Words have always been easy for him, he can twist and change and use them, spin lies and half-truths so skillfully that no one ever suspected him, and he was proud of his ability. The Aesir looked down on him for that, but Loki did not care for he was different because of that, he was special. There was no one like him, no one could wield words like him. It was just him, and although it made him even more of an outcast, he loved it because it was the only thing that was completely his, it and his seidr.

"I have held your soul in my hands for a long time, Trickster. As soon as death touched you, you were mine to have", Hela says, and there is a greedy tone in her voice that she does not even bother to hide as she looks at him. Loki is now sure that she is going to use him as her puppet, her little pawn, but he cannot think of her purpose.

"I fear you are wrong, my queen", Loki answers, his voice even. "I am no one's to have."

Death may have taken him, but he will not let it control him anymore. He has been used so many times before, the life he used to have was not even really his, but now he has had enough of it. No one will ever use him ever again, no one will ever make him a pawn.

Hela lifts her brows, looking amused. "Don't be so sure", she says. "Many think they have control when in truth they have only the lie of it. You should be careful, little giant."

It does not sound quite like a warning, more like a simple observation, but Loki hears the underlying tone in her voice saying that he should think twice before deciding to defy her. She expects him to fear her as everyone else does, but Loki is not intimidated by her at all. He has met much worse creatures than her, has experienced unimaginable pain and fear in their hands. There is nothing she can do that could be worse.

Loki fights the urge to smile and tell her that he has no intention of submitting to her will. He is his own master now, only he, no one else.

A look crosses her face then as if she knows what he is thinking. She looks like a predator waiting for a chance to strike, and it is a look that Loki does not like at all. "Tell me, how was lady Frigga? It is a shame that I never had the chance to meet her."

Loki stiffens, his breath catching in his throat. Hela sees his expression before he can push it away, to hide it, and she smiles again, a cruel little smile on her red and rotting lips.

"Oh, I see", she says slowly as if only realising it now. "Still a sore subject?"

Loki seethes. How does she _dare_ talk to him about his mother? How does she dare say her name? She was the one who took him away, she caused Frigga to cry, she ruined _everything_. Loki could have been happy in Valhalla, he thinks he would have been, for he was finally letting it all go, all his hatred and anger and sorrow. He would have been there with Frigga in peace, and they would have spent their days in her garden or swimming in the sea or lying on the ground watching stars. Someday Thor would have joined them when his time had come, and they would have welcomed him and held him in their arms and everything would have been fine. They would have been a family again.

But he is not there anymore, he will never find a way back and it is all Hela's fault. Oh, how he hates her.

"Why?" Loki asks, knowing that she understands what he means. He does not quite manage to keep his voice from trembling.

Hela lets out a laugh, a tinkling little sound that echoes around the hall. "Well, I had to give your poor mother the last chance to see you. I am not as heartless as they say. It was a pity she died like that, all alone, and it must have been very painful for you to lose her", she says with sympathy that is anything but real. "I simply wished to allow you proper goodbyes."

"No", Loki says quietly, and his eyes are burning with green fire as he meets her gaze. "Don't lie to the liar, my dear. It never ends in your favour."

Hela smiles again and looks at him as if applauding him for his nerve. "No, it was not, I admit", she says, absently twirling a strand of her hair around her bony fingers. "I had a much simpler reason."

"And what was it?"

"I wanted to see what you would do, of course", she explains.

She says it as if it were as simple as that, as if she were just bored and wanted to play with his fate to spend time. Loki feels his fury writhing inside him.

"You scheming little _bitch_", he snarls, his voice rising, taking a step towards her and wanting nothing more than to wrap his arms around her throat and squeeze until her eyes pop out of her skull, to drag her down from her high seat and throw her to the void between the worlds.

She could have spared him from all pain by simply taking him straight to Helheim once he died, but no, that would have been too easy, she wanted to have a little fun at his expense before crushing him for good. She gave him everything he ever wanted, his mother and a promise of peace, but then she snatched it away from him as if to say that he might have got it all but not quite, that he did not deserve it. What a laugh she must have got out of it.

Hela leans forward, not smiling anymore, and her eye flashes in anger, a warning. Loki stops and does not say anything else he intended to say even though he wants to, realising that he should definitely not anger her any more than he already has. She is a powerful being, and if she decides that she does not like him, Loki will spend the rest of eternity in Naströnd with Nidhögg chewing on his corpse.

"Silence!" she hisses, and her aura is now darker, her seidr swirling around her. It does not escape her control, but Loki feels it edging closer and threatening to swallow him. "You don't want find out the limits of my patience, do you?"

Loki grits his teeth, thinking about how it would feel to lash out and scratch her remaining eye out, to show her what happens to those who think they can hurt his family and get away with it. But in the end he says nothing, clenching his hands into fists and glaring at her. He hopes that she knows how much he despises her.

Hela looks at him with satisfaction when he stays silent. She is now calm again, and she crosses her legs like a well-behaving noble girl, resting her back against the throne. She flicks her wrist, and her servants bow deep, their heads almost touching the floor, and then they leave the hall without a word.

"You think yourself to be so clever, but it would be wise to remember that it is not you who holds the power here", Hela says quietly. She does not sound angry anymore, but Loki saw the chaos in her eye when he angered her, saw the deep madness of her mind. She is volatile, and very, very dangerous. "This is my realm, I am the queen here."

They watch each other for a while, neither of them willing to turn their eyes away. Hela wants Loki to surrender, to become like all her other subjects, a mindless drone to be ordered around for her amusement, but Loki will never do that. He knows he is not free here, far from it, but she is wrong if she thinks that it means he will not fight her. He will do everything he can to make her regret what she did to him.

"What is it that you want from me?" Loki finally asks with a sigh. After all she did to him, she owes him the answer. Perhaps she wanted to hurt him, perhaps she did it simply out of spite, whatever the reason is, he deserves to know what she wants from him.

For the first time Hela looks a bit uncertain, her eye flickering to something Loki cannot see, her head tilting to the side as if she hears something, but then she smooths her expression again and offers him a wide grin, sharp and snakelike.

"It is not I who has business with you", she tells him.

Loki frowns, not quite understanding what she means by that. All this time he has believed that it is her who is pulling the strings, but if there is someone else who wants something from him, well, it changes many things. He does not understand why he just cannot be left alone even now that he is dead. All he wants to do is sleep and forget, but apparently that is too much to ask.

"Then who has?" he asks with a sigh. He does not want to play Hela's games any longer, he is tired of everything. If he cannot have his mother or his life back, there is nothing that is worth wanting anymore. Why should he care about anything now?

"You might not know it yourself, but you have much value", Hela continues as if he did not say anything. "Much more than you could ever imagine, and there are some who are not pleased by your death. Not at all."

She looks at him and smiles. "You should have perhaps reconsidered saving your dear Thunderer, for it is not over yet. Not for a long time."

It is said with absolute sureness in her voice as if she knows what will happen, like a promise, and Loki meets her gaze, unwilling to be afraid. Whatever happens now, he will not run away anymore. There is nowhere to go.

Hela stands then, her chin lifted up, and even though she is half shorter than Loki, small and delicate, she still radiates infinite power. He wonders why she chooses to appear as a girl when she could by anything she wants.

She descends the steps slowly, the hems of her gown trailing behind her on the floor as she moves like smoke. "Come", she says to Loki with a small gesture of her fingers. "There is someone who wants to meet you."

Loki does not think anything good will come of this, but he does not really have a choice so he follows her after a brief moment of hesitation. They walk out of her hall, the doors slamming shut behind them. Hela moves completely without making any sound, not even her feet rustle on the ground, and Loki finds it unnerving.

Everything is so quiet there, as if time itself has stopped, as if it does not even exist there, and everywhere Loki looks, he sees only death. The whole realm reeks of it, it floats in the air, the suffocating smell of despair and lost hope and anguish, and Loki cannot help but feel the affect it has on him. It is hard to think, his thoughts start to get muddy, and for a short moment he considers just stopping and lying down on the ground and staying there.

Shaking his head, he pushes the poisoning thoughts away, realising that the realm is trying to make him its own, to lull him to an eternal sleep. Loki notices that as Hela moves, she leaves even more death in her wake. It flows slowly from her, spreading out to her realm, strong and consuming. She seemed powerful in her hall, but it was nothing compared to this, now she is truly a queen of this kingdom of death and ruin.

As they walk through the realm, Hela leading and Loki having no choice but to follow her, the dead start to appear. They come out of the darkness one by one, and it is hard to see them, for at first they seem like only shadows, flickering as if they were not really there. But the closer they get, the better Loki can see them.

The first one he can see properly is a woman, standing a small distance away from them, completely still. Her head is lowered to the ground, but when they get closer, she lifts her gaze slowly, her movements stiff.

Hela does not even glance at her, but Loki is curious and looks at her. He sees that her face is gaunt and covered in ugly scars, three gashes from her forehead to her chin, and her hands that are clutching her apron are dark with blood that does not dry, it just drips and drips to the ground, over and over again. When she sees them, particularly Hela, she recoils and quickly turns away.

Soon after that they come across others. Men and woman and even children, all standing still like statues, their faces full of emptiness, their eyes seeing everything but nothing, and reminders of their death are visible on their bodies and clothes. They do not come any closer as Loki and Hela walk past them, no, instead they move further away from them. A few dare to steal a glance at Loki, but none of them looks at Hela. They cover their faces with their hands as she approaches, and it is clear that they fear her more than anything.

Hela ignores them completely, for she does not care about them at all, to her they are nothing more than people she has control over, her army of corpses. But Loki keeps looking at them, thinking about how miserable they are. Mere shadows of themselves, they have nothing left, she took everything from them, and now they have accepted their fates. They are nothing anymore, and Loki wonders if he will able to stop himself from becoming like them.

"What do you think of my realm, Liesmith?" Hela asks him as they continue their journey. "Isn't it beautiful?"

Beautiful is not the first word to come to Loki's mind as he looks around and sees the countless dead souls in the darkness, but he is not going to tell her that. "It is… impressive", he says instead.

They go through a forest with trees that have no leaves, their branches hanging low above the ground and their trunks distorted. Loki thinks he sees more shadows behind the trees, standing and waiting for something that will not come, but they stay where they are, forgotten and fading.

The path with white stones is there again, startlingly bright against the darkness, and they walk along it. Loki has no idea where it will lead them, but he does not ask Hela, only follows her silently. He has a feeling that he will find out soon enough.

They leave the forest after some time, and they come to an open plain. There is a small lake there, and its black water is slow and silent, its surface smooth. It is the only that is calm there, for hundreds and hundreds of Hela's poor souls are on the opposite shore. They are knee-deep in the lake, naked, and some of them are standing still, some of them are writhing in the water, but all of them are crying.

Loki cannot hear what they are saying, their words nothing more than a garbled mess, but the sound of their screaming and wailing cuts under his skin and makes his head spin. He does not even realise that he is covering his ears with his hands, but it is no use, he hears them so clearly that he could be standing right next to them.

It is terrible, the tormenting screams they let out, their song of never-ending agony. The sounds that are coming out of their mouths are not human, they are anything but that, savage and so completely lost. Their faces are contorted in absolute pain as if they were being ripped apart, even though there is nothing hurting them that Loki can see. But he knows that they are suffering, for eternal agony is their punishment, the payment for their crimes, and they cannot leave the shore. They are shackled, and nothing will set them free of it.

The dead just keep screaming and screaming, pleading for his help, and Loki wants them to stop. He cannot take it anymore.

Hela is not affected by it at all, she just spares them a quick glance and smiles, wide and cruel. Loki is glad when they finally pass the lake and the sounds slowly die away.

He takes a deep breath and Hela turns to look at him, and there is an amused glint in her eye. "The realms are full of evil, poisoning and destroying them, but nothing lives forever", she says. "Death gives them to me when their fates have been fulfilled, and I give them what they deserve. It is very simple, isn't it?"

Loki can still hear the screams and pleads of those that are forever bound to Naströnd in his head, a haunting echo. "Yes, it is", he answers. He feels sick.

They stop then, and for a moment Loki wonders why because there is absolutely nothing there, but then he sees the ground in front of him suddenly disappear. It reveals an abyss underneath that is perfectly round and huge, and they are standing right on the edge of it. Loki takes a step backwards in surprise, for he did not expect that, but then his curiosity overcomes his trepidation and he leans carefully down to look at it.

He sees nothing but darkness so deep that it reaches the roots of the worlds, and there is something in the abyss that makes Loki's heart beat faster and his hands sweaty, something powerful. It is almost as if the rift were thrumming, as if it were alive, and Loki senses an unfamiliar power coming from it. He can hear it breathe.

The longer he looks into the abyss, the more it makes him feel as if he were losing his mind. He moves away from it.

Hela smiles again, revealing her teeth, half of them white and perfect, the other half rotting. Loki does not like her expression at all.

"Well, go on now, they are waiting for you", she says impatiently, her brows raised, and then she places her small hands on his back and suddenly pushes. Loki can do nothing to stop himself from stumbling over the edge and into the darkness.

He hears Hela's laughter above him, loud and bright, like a little girl playing with her toys. He falls.

* * *

"Hello", a woman says.

Loki blinks his eyes rapidly in an attempt to get used to the sudden light that is shining too brightly and making his eyes water. When he finally sees something, he does not know whether he is dreaming or not.

There is a small well near him, its water so blue and clear that he can see the white sand in the bottom of it. The surface ripples slightly as the water flows gently, moved by the wind, and two snow white swans are swimming circles in it side by side. A tree so high that Loki cannot see where it ends looms over the well, its thick branches hanging almost protectively over the water. The tree goes on and on, never-ending, reaching out to the heavens, and its huge roots are spread out on the ground under it.

Three women are sitting on them, dressed in long robes that seem to be colourless and at the same time full of colours. Even though they are all of different age, they look somehow like sisters, and Loki realises now that it was one of them who spoke to him. He stares at them, unable to process what exactly is happening now.

One of them, the woman closest to Loki, is old but still tall and graceful, her gentle face covered in countless wrinkles and lines. Her willowy hair that almost reaches the ground is white and grey like wisps of smoke, and there is wisdom as old as life in her eyes as she looks at Loki with a small smile on her lips, a smile that is full of secrets and knowledge.

The woman sitting next to her is much younger, but she is still a mature woman with the features of a mother, soft and strict at the same time. She is not beautiful or even pretty, but there is strength in her that somehow draws Loki in as if he were a moth and she were a flame. Her head is covered with a black scarf that frames her face, and as opposed to the older woman she does not even glance at Loki, her eyes glued to something that is in her hands.

The third woman is not even a woman yet, she is more like a girl on the cusp of adolescence, young and wild. She is looking straight at Loki with a thoughtful look, cocking her head sideways as if he is something fascinating, something worth picking apart and seeing what makes him tick. Loki finds it hard to even look back at her because she her face is constantly changing so quickly that he cannot see any of her faces properly. She flickers back and forth, almost as if she were not there the whole time, and something about her makes Loki incredibly nervous. She has a certain aura about her, a quiet threat, a promise of chaos.

The only things that do not change are her eyes, huge and white and unseeing, and her hair that is a mass of bright red curls, the colour of fire when it comes closing in for a kill. It makes Loki suddenly think of the little spider he met in Midgard, the one with blood on her on ledger and demons on her heels.

Loki knows immediately who the three women sitting by the well are, for how could he not know? Every child in Asgard hears about them the moment they are born, and throughout their lives they are told countless stories of the great sisters of Yggdrasil. The Norns, they are called, for few dare to say their real names because names hold power, and they are much more than gods, much more than anything else residing in the worlds. They are a part of the universe, a part of the tree, eternal beings with the power of fate in their hands. They control the lives of everyone who has ever lived and will live, and no one can escape them.

Underneath the world tree they always sit, have sit since the beginning and will sit until the end of everything, watching the worlds rise and crumble. The three sisters of past, present and future, spinning threads and cutting them, creating life and then ending it. They are the guardians of Yggdrasil, the keepers of balance, the mothers of all.

Yes, Loki has heard much of them, but never did he think that he would meet them. No one has ever met them and lived to tell the tale, and Loki knows that it is anything but good that he is here.

He stands there silently, watching them and waiting for something, anything, and then the women all turn to look at him. "Come here", the oldest, Urd, says and beckons him to come closer with a small curl of her wrinkly fingers. When Loki stays where he is, hesitating and wary, she laughs kindly. "Don't be shy, child. Come."

Still suspicious but having no other choice, Loki walks slowly to where the women sit on the roots of the great tree. They are sitting in a circle, and their hands are full of long threads that seem to come out of nowhere. Some threads are thick as rope while some are so thin that Loki barely sees them, but all of them are a brilliant gold, bright and glowing with warm light. The threads are tangled in the women's fingers as their hands move quickly as lightning in synchronised movements, passing them back and forth to each other. Having done it since the universe was born, they do it completely effortlessly, and Loki watches them with fascination.

It all makes him think of his mother again, and though it hurts, he holds on to it because memories are all he has of her now. He remembers that Frigga had her own weaving room in the palace where she wove her tapestries, and only she and a few of her most trusted ladies were allowed to go in there. Not servants, not her children, not even Odin. The doors were always shut, the windows were always closed, and many wondered what the queen did there that needed such secrecy, but none knew.

Once when Loki was a child he asked his mother to let him into the room. He was terribly curious and wanted to see what she did there, and so he picked her favourite flowers from her garden and gave them to her, batting his eyelashes at her and looking as adorable as he could. Frigga looked at him for a while with an expression Loki could not decipher, her brows furrowed in thought, her eyes locked on his face as if searching for something, but after a while she took his hand and led him to her room.

Loki remembers thinking that it was very disappointing. He had expected something much more exciting like skulls and runes made of blood or something like that, but to him it seemed like any other room in the palace, huge and lavish and boringly ordinary. He did not understand why his mother did not usually allow anyone in, because everything there appeared to be completely normal.

Then he noticed the tapestries. Some of them were the size of a bear while some of them were only small pieces of fabric, and they hung on the walls of the room, covering them almost completely. At first Loki did not think much of them because probably every room of the palace had tapestries as decorations, but something about them drew him in and when he looked closer, he saw something strange in these ones.

Many of the tapestries made absolutely no sense to him. They were filled with splashes of different colours that did not create any images, threads running across the fabric in no rational order, and little Loki found it dumb because why would anyone make tapestries if they portrayed nothing? But when he looked at them long enough, craning his neck so he could see better, he thought that he saw something else in them.

It was nothing more than fleeting flashes and flickers that were mostly unclear, almost like dreams, sweet and terrible at the same time, and Loki did not know what they meant. But when he mentioned it to his mother and asked what their purpose was, she paled, her hands starting to tremble, and she told him not to look at them anymore. She ushered him out even though Loki wanted to look more closely at the tapestries, and she never allowed him to come to her weaving room again. Now Loki knows why.

He sits down onto a branch few meters from the sisters. They pay no attention to him almost as if he were not even there, their eyes focused on the threads in their hands, and so Loki is free to observe them as much as he wants.

They look completely human as they weave, like harmless women, a maiden, a mother, and a crone, but Loki does not let that deceive him. He has learned not to trust what he sees a long time ago, for few things are what they seem, and the sisters are not an exception. He has heard many things of them, stories and legends of their infinite power, and he would be a fool to think them anything but dangerous. They have not been hostile to him, not at all, but the hidden blade is always more effective than the swinging sword. Loki does not trust them.

As he watches them Skuld, the girl with fiery hair so bright that it looks almost like it is alive, scrutinises a thin thread in her hands with a frown, deeply in thought. Then she sighs and reaches out to take the scissors lying next to her feet. They are enormous, the size of a baby's arm, the clear steel glittering in the light, and with a casual flick of her fingers she cuts the thread in half and lets the pieces fall to the ground. They turn black, and then they disappear as if the thread never even existed.

Loki feels a sudden burst of coldness and hears a faint echo of a wail, the sound of a terrible loss, but then it becomes quiet again. He shivers.

"We have been waiting for you, Loki", Urd says suddenly. Loki, not expecting her to speak, almost startles and curses himself for not being on his guard.

"So Hela said", he responds coldly after a moment.

Just thinking of Hela makes him clench his hands into fits, and he vows that he will make her pay for what she did to him. She is sorely mistaken if she thinks that Loki will forget it, he will find a way to make her wish she had never dragged him into her little games.

"Oh, don't to be so harsh on her", Urd says as if she can read his mind, her voice mildly scolding. "Everything she did, she did because we ordered her to do so."

Loki turns to look at her so quickly that his neck almost snaps. "What?"

"Surely you didn't think that she was the one who planned everything?" Verdandi asks, raising her head and looking at Loki for the first time. Her features are common and plain, her eyes a dull brown, but just looking at her makes Loki feel small and weak. "No, it was our doing all along."

"She acted on our orders when she pulled you out of Valhalla", Urd continues. "Granted, she could have done it more gently, but it was a necessary act."

"I-I don't understand", Loki stammers, devoid of his usual eloquence, of his silver tongue. He is confused, his head is spinning, he is not in control, and if there is one thing he hates with passion, it is losing control. He does not know what to do.

"I thought you were supposed to be the quick-witted one", Skuld snorts.

Loki ignores her. "Why?" he says through gritted teeth, looking at the sisters and demanding answers. He will not give up until he has them. They owe him at least that.

When he woke in Valhalla, on the dawn of his new life in eternity with his mother next to him, he thought death made him free, but no, it did not. He is still just a pawn in the game of beings much more powerful than him, poor little Loki, and now the stakes have been raised once more. It seems that he will never be free.

_Of course_, he thinks, and the words taste like bitterness in his mind, like blood and ashes. _Of course._

"Why couldn't you just let me die and be done with it?" Loki continues then when the sisters show no signs of answering, and it comes out almost like a plea, his voice trembling, and he cannot hide it. He is so damn tired. "Why did you make Hela take me away from my mother? Why couldn't I stay?"

He has no patience left for whatever games they are playing, he is past that point, has been for ages. He just wants it all to end now, wants to be put out of his misery for good. It would be better that way, everything would be finally over.

Skuld laughs and looks at him with her dead eyes, unseeing and allseeing, her mouth curled into a terrible smile. "We had to do that, little one. We are not done with you yet."

Loki has had enough. "What gave you the right to do that?" he shouts suddenly, springing to his feet and balling his hands into fists. He does nothing to hide the anger in his voice, the cold fury storming in his heart that wants to be let out. He has tried to be strong, tried to feel nothing, but he cannot contain it anymore. He lets it all out. "What gave you the right to play with my life as if it means nothing?"

He is shouting, he is screaming, but he does not care, not even one bit. His voice is raw and his head hurts, and it feels as though thousands and thousands of knives are piercing his skin and making him bleed, blood leaking out of his ears and eyes and nose, drop by drop until there is nothing left of him anymore. He wants to hurt someone, the sisters, himself, anyone, to tear and shatter and ruin until it is all over, until it is finally quiet again and he can lay down his head and never rise again.

"I had it all, after all this time I was finally at peace, but you took it away from me!" he shouts. "_You had no right!"_

_The sun kissing his skin, fingers brushing his face, so gentle and loving, he is home again, she is there and she smiles at him, her eyes bright, nothing is wrong anymore, he wants to laugh and cry, she is holding him tightly, it is so right, perfect, he will never leave her, never ever again, mother, I swear to you, I love you-_

Everyone wants something from him, everyone wants to use him, to break and ruin him, and Loki is sick of it, so sick of it. He has been stripped of everything that once defined him, his life, his family, himself, he has been laid out bare for the whole universe to see, empty and defeated, nothing more than a shadow of what he once was. Loki Odinson, Loki Laufeyson, Trickster, Liesmith, Silvertongue, he is none of that anymore, he is nothing now.

What a great joke it is, he thinks. He was his own downfall, he was the one who hurt and ruined and destroyed, only he. He can blame Odin and Thor and the people of Asgard for all he wants, but in the end it was his plans that failed and disrupted the balance, it was he who took the path of destruction and could not turn back anymore. Chaos and blood, that is his true nature, lies and ash and terror. His legacy.

"You question us, little god?" Skuld says quietly, and her eyes are burning like her hair, a raging inferno destroying everything in its path and it makes Loki shut his mouth, the words die in his throat and he cannot look away from her even though he wants to. He feels her pulling his mind apart string by string, unraveling it like a piece of cloth. He takes a step back. "You, who are just a small babe in the arms of the tree. You think yourself so clever, but you know _nothing_."

Loki stares at her, unable to do anything else. Now he knows why her face changes all the time; she is the personification of future, of all endless possibilities and twists of fate, of everything that could be and might be and will be. She is not like her sisters, no, she is much worse than them because future cannot be controlled, cannot be tamed. The entire universe is in her hands.

"You had no right", Loki repeats through gritted teeth, his voice quieter. It is all he can say now.

Skuld lets out a scoff. "We had every right. Your fate is ours, and we are free to do as we please with you."

Loki opens his mouth to say something, perhaps to shout at her again, to tell her that they do not control him, they do not own him, but the look Verdandi shoots him is enough to make him keep his words to himself.

"We had our reasons", Urd says patiently as she twists the threads in her hands, not fazed by Loki's outburst, "and all will be explained to you soon. You shall have your answers, Loki."

Loki looks at them, his chest heaving and his breath coming out in short pants. There are so many things he wants to say, so many questions and accusations, but he keeps quiet, not trusting himself to refrain from shouting again. They say they had reasons, and Loki will hear them out because he has no other options.

"Sit down", Verdandi says and gestures at the ground. When Loki does not move at all, glaring them all with anger in his eyes, she repeats her words, and this time they are a clear order. Loki sits down begrudgingly and waits.

"The fates of all living things are seldom set in stone", Urd begins to explain, "they are all connected to each other like the threads of a spider's web, and when one changes, the others change too. That is inevitable, and nothing remains unchanged."

"Everything has its purpose in this universe, its fate, and it is our task to ensure that they fulfil it", she continues. "We make the threads, and when the time comes, we cut them. A beginning and an end, such is the way of life and death, and we preserve the balance that must always be. If there is no balance, all shall end."

"We have the power of seeing", Verdandi says. "From the birth of the universe we have seen the ways things shall be, the rise and fall of the worlds. Everything changes with time, yes, for there are countless possibilities, but we see and we know."

"What does any of this have to do with me?" Loki asks, wanting them get to the point.

Urd looks at him, her gentle eyes full of something that looks like sympathy. Loki has no need of her pity. "We have watched over you years and years before you were even born, Loki, for you are more important than you even realise. There is power in you, such power that even you don't know the whole extent of, a gift from Yggdrasil itself, and we have always known you would be something great, something extraordinary. It is your fate."

Loki remembers how his mother used to tell him that he was destined to be great, her little silver boy made of starlight and seidr, born to be a king. He had a great gift, she said many times, a precious gift, and she would hold him and whisper into his ears that he was important, that he had a purpose. _You matter, Loki_, she said, _never doubt that._

As a child Loki believed her because he wanted to be great just like his father, loved and feared by all, but it did not take him long to realise that such things only existed in songs. Sooner or later everyone falls.

Loki snorts, shaking his head. "Well, I am dead, as you can see. My fate does not matter anymore."

"It does", Urd says. "You don't know it, but we do."

Skuld twirls her fingers gracefully in the air, and a thread appears in her hands. It is black and decaying, looking as if it might tear any moment, but somehow it is still whole. Loki stares at it and feels a sudden urge to take it from her hands and hold it tightly, to keep it safe, but at the same time he feels sick just looking at it. He cannot turn his eyes away.

"Can you see?" Skuld asks, holding the thread in an almost gentle manner as if it is something precious. "This is your thread, your lifeline. We created it for you when you were only a small babe in your mother's womb, and when you drew your last breath today, it died with you. But it didn't break as it was supposed to."

Loki stares at the sisters, his eyes flickering back and forth between them as he tries to understand. "What does it mean?"

"It means that you are dead but you are still alive", Skuld says. "You are not completely dead but neither are you even close to being alive, no, you are stuck between them. Nothing like that has ever happened before."

"All men must die when their time comes, but your death was never supposed to happen, not yet", Verdandi says. "We didn't see it coming, for even we can be blinded, and we could not stop it from happening before it was too late."

Urd reaches out to take Loki's hand before he can stop her. "You have an important fate ahead of you, Loki, and you have not fulfilled it yet. Your journey was just beginning when it ended, and it was not supposed to be so."

"Your death upset the balance, and now the end is nearing. The tree is shaking, the leaves are falling, and if we do nothing, Ragnarök will fall upon us before its time. We must stop it", Skuld says, her eyes looking at something that is far away, gazing into nothingness, her face ever-changing.

"What do I have to do?" Loki asks. "What is my fate?"

All this talk of fate and life and death makes his head spin, but he wants to know, he needs to know. All his life he has wondered and searched for answers that he could not find, tried to find out who he was and what was his purpose, but now he is finally so close to them, he has them in his grasp. Now he can finally know.

"There is shadow lurking in the corners of the universe, a danger, hidden and waiting, but soon it will reveal itself and all shall fall into chaos and destruction", Urd says, her face solemn. "War will find every realm and he will stop at nothing, for it is what he wants. He will spare no one in his quest to court Death."

Suddenly Loki understands. "Thanos."

Just saying the name of the titan makes his hands tremble. He remembers purple skin and red eyes, mad smiles and burning touch, unimaginable torture until he was begging for death, but even then he was denied that release. He was not allowed to meet her, Thanos said, not before him. He spoke of how he would please her by sending her millions and millions of souls until the realms were nothing but empty wastelands, until there was nothing more than ruins. He told Loki how he would collect the gems, one by one, and when he had their infinite power, he would start with Asgard and make Loki watch the fall of the golden realm, the twilight of the gods.

Loki fought back but it was no use, Thanos and his minions tortured him until he was nothing more than broken bones and charred skin and a shattered mind, and then they built him up again, molded him to their liking and put the scepter in his hands and told him that he was born to be a king.

_You were betrayed_, Thanos whispered into his ears day after day, his words coated in poison that Loki had been too blind to see. _They cast you out, they made you fall, don't you want revenge? With me you can be great, you can rule and no one will ever doubt your worth again. You can make them all burn._

Loki wanted that then, or at least he thought that it was what he wanted. He still does not quite know what was real and what was not, for his memories of that time are a blurred mess. They broke him and fixed him and made him mad, madder than he had ever been, blue in his eyes and chaos in his mind. He was a perfect little soldier, made to follow orders without question, and when they pointed at Midgard and told him to get the Tesseract, he went there and killed and conquered and failed.

Ever since he was captured, he knew that Thanos would make him pay for losing the war. It would only be a matter of time, he told himself as he sat in his cell and waited, and that was why he had every intention of escaping from his cell as soon as possible. Thanos would come for him, but Loki could make himself disappear, could hide and be never found again. They promised him that they would find him no matter what, that he could not hide from them, but Loki knew that he had no other options. Running away was the only way to stay alive.

Urd nods. "For a long time he has been quiet, only a distant threat lingering on the edges of the worlds, but now he has started to put his plans into action. Thanos is coming, and he is coming soon. He seeks the gems and he already knows where most of them are, and he will take them by force and destroy everything in his path. If he gets them all, he can't be defeated."

"The Tesseract", Loki says quietly, feeling cold. "It's in Asgard, in the weapon's vault with the Gauntlet, and Thanos will come for them."

Loki was supposed to get the Tesseract and give it to Thanos in exchange for the throne of Midgard, that was their bargain, but he failed spectacularly and now the gem is locked in the vault with Odin's other stolen relics. They are guarded with protective spells made by the Allfather himself, but Malekith showed that penetrating Asgard's defences is not as hard as it seems, and Odin is old and weary, not as strong as he once was. They will have no hope of surviving against Thanos when he comes, not without terrible losses, and Loki knows that he will come. He will make all of Asgard burn.

"He will come for them all", Verdandi says. "It is only a matter of time. They are scattered around the universe, some hidden and some not, but he has his ways and sooner or later he will have them all."

"Do you undertand now, Loki?" Urd asks him, looking at his eyes, at his soul. "Your fate is intertwined with his, and you are the one who has the power to stop him. He cannot be allowed to set the worlds on fire, if he succeeds he will push us all into darkness and turn us to ashes. He cares little for balance, all he wants is to kill mindlessly because he thinks it will please his lady. He must be stopped, and that is why you weren't supposed to die, not today, not like this. Your death became too soon."

She is silent for a moment. "Once we saw that you would be the one to bring Ragnarök upon us all, chaos and ruin, Loki the Stormbringer, but the fates are fickle and they have changed since. That is no longer your path unless you make it so, but we have seen otherwise and we believe that you can find your redemption if you wish so."

"What makes you think that I care about any of that?" Loki sneers, twisting away from her and baring his teeth.

It is a lie, a blatant lie that he wants to make himself believe, because he wants to fix everything, oh, how he wants, but he does not dare to think that it is possible, it is too late. He cannot afford to hope anymore.

"It is all in your hands", Urd says with a shrug. "You have many paths ahead of you, all going to different directions, and it is your task to choose which one to take and we cannot affect your decision. We can only hope that you choose the right one."

Loki stays quiet for a while, staring at his hands and thinking. He has thought about this so many times, about turning back and trying to make things right, but he has never dared to. He does not think he has the strength to do that.

Regret is not in his nature, but he cannot help feeling it all the same. He still hates, yes, he cannot get rid of it all, cannot forget all those years and cannot forgive, but his hatred does not burn as brightly as it once did. Everything has changed over the years, he most of all, and there is little left of the silly little boy he was before his fall. That Loki is dead and gone.

But still he clings to the past. When he stood in the middle of the destruction of New York, streets burning and people screaming, he looked around and did not feel any satisfaction at all. It was not what he wanted. At that moment, Thor holding him and looking into his eyes, pleading him to stop, Loki wanted nothing more than to drop his scepter and do just that. Thor was there, Thor had come for him, and Loki hated him and loved him and wanted to claw his heart out. Thor kept calling him brother as if nothing had changed, as if Loki had not turned into a monster, and Loki could not take it anymore. It hurt too much, it made him weak, and so he turned his back on Thor and hid his tears and tried to harden his heart for good even though he knew it would not work.

He had a lot of time to think of all that had happened when they locked him in his cell and threw the key away, sentencing him to an eternity of being buried alive. His mind was much clearer then, the mad titan's influence fading, and so he was alone with his thoughts day after day, trying to pinpoint the exact moment when it all went so wrong.

Loki regrets. Not Jötunheim or Midgard because those monsters deserved to be wiped out and the humans are nothing but ants to him, but there are so many other things he regrets, too many. He does not want to, but he cannot help it. He regrets the way things happened, how he hurt Thor and his mother over and over again though they still loved him, how he was blinded by his rage and hurt and madness. How he destroyed.

If he could just turn back time, to remove all the red on his hands, he thinks he would try to make things turn out differently. He would not let himself fall.

"How?" Loki asks finally, choosing his path. He hopes that it is the right one. "How can I do anything about that when I'm dead?"

Urd smiles at him then, gentle and pleased. "We don't have the power to change what has happened, it is out of our hands, but there is someone who can do that and Mistress knows how important it is that you fulfil your fate."

Loki furrows his brows in confusion. "Mistress?"

Suddenly Loki sees her, no, more like senses her. She is barely there, a faint shadow, but the more Loki looks for her, the stronger her presence becomes. He sees a young woman in black robes with silvery hair and white skin, her face beautiful and unreachable, her frame frail but still powerful. She gives him a small smile, and as Loki looks at her, she becomes suddenly a skeleton, her white bones gleaming and her eyes nothing but black holes.

_Loki_, she says and he hears her voice in her mind, lovely and terrible at the same time. _Come closer, my child. _

He takes a step forward. She becomes clearer and clearer as he approaches her, standing under the shadow of the great tree. Her feet do not touch the ground, Loki notes, she is standing on air as she waits for him. He stops when he is right before her.

She looks at her with her empty eyes. _At last we meet, little godling, though still too soon._ _I have watched you from afar, and sometimes he speaks of you._

It does not take much to understand that she is talking of Thanos, and now that Loki tries to remember better the seemingly never-ending days he spent being tortured and broken, morning and day and evening and night, over and over again, he recalls sensing an unfamiliar presence watching him. Not often, only a few times, and most of the time Loki thought he was just going mad and imagining it. Now he knows it was her.

As if sensing his train of thought, Death smiles, reverting back to the form of a woman. She looks young but old, her beauty eternal. _I cannot meet him yet, not until he dies, cannot even speak to him, but I can watch him and listen to him. He likes to speak of his plans, of how he intends to make all the worlds burn one by one. He thinks it would please me._

"Would it?" Loki blurts out without thinking. She shakes her head.

_No, it doesn't_, she says. _People die all the time, yes, but only when it is the right time for them. Each of them has a fate of their own, each of them matters, and when they have fulfilled their purpose, isn't it only right that they leave life behind? Once they die, they are safe with me, and I can give them the peace they all wish for. Death can be cruel sometimes, that is true, but it is eternal. Life is beautiful, but it will always end. I can give them so much more._

She sighs. _Thanos thinks that it will please me if he gifts me millions and millions of souls, but it isn't how it should be, he doesn't understand that there must be a balance between life and death. He doesn't understand that I don't want them. _

She sounds almost sad, and Loki thinks he is finally starting to understand what this all is about. It all makes sense now.

"You want me to kill him", he says, not even a question, only an observation. He looks at Death in the eye, and slowly she nods.

_Yes_, she whispers. _He is mad, but I can make him better. He says he loves me, and I think I could love him too, but I cannot let him live anymore. And I cannot take him myself, and that is why I need you. You have to stop him before he destroys the worlds, and you have to kill him. You have to give him to me._

Loki thinks for a while, lets his thoughts swallow him, just stops and thinks. Killing Thanos does sound appealing and Loki wants his revenge, wants to make Thanos pay, but he knows that it is not as simple as that. The titan is strong and possesses a large army, and he will get even stronger once he gains the gems. Loki should be able to slow him down by hunting down the gems before him and then defeating him with their power, but he is not sure he can do it, he is not sure he can face Thanos. He does not think he can.

Loki fears him. Thanos hurt him, broke him, ruined him, and Loki could not stop him even though he did everything he could, he was in Loki's mind, he turned him mad, and Loki can still feel his mark inside his mind, feel the barely healed scars and tears and gaps where he was ripped wide open. He can still remember what was done to him, _it hurts, it burns, please stop, he can see his own ribs jutting out of his chest, he can feel the blood leaking out of his eyes, he sees blue, there is something in his mind, someone, poking and twisting and tearing, pain pain pain-_

No, he will not think of it, he will not allow himself to think of it. It is in the past, it is not real anymore, Thanos cannot hurt him anymore.

_If you fail, if the Tesseract is kept from us, there will be no realm, no barren moon, no crevice where he can't find you. You think you know pain? He'll make you long for something as sweet as pain._

Loki shuts his eyes and then opens them again. He can do this. "So you can truly do it?" he says. "You can send me back?"

Death nods. _I can, but you must understand that should you meet your doom again, it will be permanent then. You have only one chance. _

"But if you can reverse my death, make me alive again..." Loki trails off, the realisation making the words catch in his throat, sudden hope filling his heart until it feels as if it might burst, but then Death shakes her head sadly and Loki swallows his grief again. It is hard, and he does not know why he lets himself hope and hope when it is all for nothing.

_I cannot bring your mother back_, she says gently. _She has made her peace with me, and it would be cruel to take that away from her. She is where she belongs now._

"I understand", Loki says, but he cannot hide the bitterness in his voice. He understands why, he truly does, for the balance must be preserved, but that does not stop him from wanting.

Death smiles at him, her form flickering between a skeleton and a woman. _Do not lose hope, for she is not lost to you yet. She will wait for you in Valhalla, and it is in your hands whether you will join her or not. I will come for you when your time comes, and if you deserve it, I will lead you to her and you shall be together in eternity. It is all up to you, Loki._

Before Loki can say anything, she lifts her hand and presses it on his forehead, her touch light and soft, and then he is no more.

* * *

Loki takes in a lungful of air and then coughs, dirt and dust and blood in his mouth. His eyes fly open and he freezes.

For a moment he just lies there and looks at the dark sky where the hidden sun is barely visible, sees the ragged mountains and dusty plains and everything is familiar, he has been here before. His heart is beating in his chest again, a sound he has missed so much, he can hear it clearly, thump, thump, thump, loud and uneven. He is not dead.

Loki lets out a laugh then, breathless and giddy and so glad, and the sound echoes around him, breaking the silence consuming this ghost of a realm. He is not dead anymore, he is not in Valhalla, not in Helheim, not with the Norns, he is _alive_, and so he laughs and laughs and cannot stop.

When his laughter finally fades way, he notices that his hands are crossed over his chest as if someone had put them there, and when he lifts them, his limbs so stiff that it is hard to even move them, he sees that they are covered in blood that is dried and darkened. It is his own blood, he thinks, remembering how it flowed and flowed until there was not much of it left, until he died. He rips his battered and ruptured armour away so that he can look at where the blade went it.

There is a scar on his stomach, just under his bruised and bloodied ribs. It is large and ugly, a deep red gash against his sickly white skin, and Loki traces his fingers on it. It does not hurt, not at all, it is almost as if it is just another one of the multiple scars covering his body. But it is not, it is different, a wound that was not supposed to heal, a wound that killed him, and Loki knows that the scar will not fade even with time. It is to be his reminder.

There is something in his hand, Loki realises suddenly. He opens his fist and a necklace is revealed, a delicate golden chain with a pale green crystal. He stares at it.

Loki recognizes the necklace. Once, when he and Thor were young boys, inseparable and unburdened and innocent, Thor had broken his leg in some incident Loki could not remember anymore. After that Loki had given Thor the necklace that is now in his hand, saying that the crystal would absorb all the harm coming to Thor. It did not actually do anything, it was only a child's act of sentimentality, and Loki wonders why Thor had kept it after all these years. He thinks he knows, and it makes his heart ache.

He picks himself up, changing his appearance with a small flick of his fingers, a simple glamour, and takes a deep breath. He looks at Svartalfheim for the last time, lets his gaze linger around this forsaken realm that was his downfall, his grave.

_Remember your fate_, the wind whispers into his ear. _You have to power to change it all, little godling. Do not disappoint us._

Loki grins, and then he slashes the empty space with his seidr and a rip appears, a pathway to the other side of the universe. He steps through it and vanishes with a burst of green light, leaving nothing but dried blood and dust behind.

He has things to do.


End file.
